Community Corner
Growing Vegetables Through the Winter
A Peachtree Corners gardener offers a suggestion and instructions on how to keep your garden going all winter long -- build a mini hoop house. It's so easy, even a kid could build it.
With temperatures dipping into the 30s again this week, Jack Frost is here and is nipping at more than our noses.
Cool season vegetables (think lettuces, broccoli, kale, collards, spinach, chard, etc.) like the colder weather that fall and early spring provide. However, from December-February, the temperatures are generally too chilly in our area for continued growth, and the plants go dormant.
Typically, come January, when the weekly vegetable deliveries from (community supported agriculture) cease and my garden goes into hibernation, I tend to go into a bit of a depression, and long for the days when my familiar friends come back to visit my plate.
Find out what's happening in Norcrosswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
This year, I had a different plan. A fellow shared her secret for growing vegetables through the winter. After watching her attached "how-to" video, within an hour (including the trip to to purchase the supplies) a 35-foot mini hoop house covered my garden.
I have to say, I was truly intimidated to attempt this project. I expected the level of difficultly to be a tad out of my comfort zone. However, truthfully, building this hoop house was by far the easiest gardening project I've ever completed.
Find out what's happening in Norcrosswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Honestly, the only frustrating part of the project occurred while at Home Depot. In the lumber section, with a cart over-flowing with PVC pipe and two young children and with five pieces of dusty rebar in my hand, the Home Depot associate came up to me and asked, "Are you lost?"
I held up rebar in my hand, pointed to my cart and quickly responded, "Do I look LOST to you?" Apparently, there aren't many women that wander into the far section of the store.
After we returned home, my daughters happily constructed 80% of the house, with my five-year-old carrying the PVC pipe and rebar from the van to the garden and my eight-year-old hammering the rebar into the ground and slipping the pipe into place.
It's astonishing what children can accomplish when you provide them with the opportunity to try.
I ordered this row cover from Amazon to place over the hoops to protect the vegetables, providing light and water through its surface, yet sheltering the vegetables from frigid temperatures. You can also purchase it locally by the foot at Farmer D's Organics store.
In addition, you'll need:
PVC pipe (10 foot 1/2 inch round pipe, found in the plumbing section, cut to eight feet), $1.68 each.
Rebar (One foot pieces. You'll need two per each piece of PVC pipe. Found in the lumber section), $1.10 each.
A rubber mallet, or something to hammer the rebar into the ground.
The portion of my garden I wanted to cover is a 35 x 3 foot space. I used a piece of pipe, curved to fit the two pieces of rebar, every three feet. The cover cloth lays over the arched pipe, secured at the bottom with heavy objects I found laying around the yard (rocks, bricks, etc.). The girls and I spent literally 15 minutes building the newest edition to our garden.
And if you can't find me come the New Year, just look under the hoop house, where I'll enthusiastically be munching on arugula and cilantro.
