We will soon transition the hoophouse to its summer purpose — hothouse crops like peppers, basil, eggplants. Maybe a tomato, tomatillo, ground cherry.
It’s time to acknowledge that the hoophouse has been great this past winter for overwintering greens.
Planted in late August, it produced robust happy plants in the fall until real cold weather.
Then we ate greens (although sparingly) all winter, with one cleanup to remove dead plants.
Come spring, some varieties really took off. We had abundance much earlier than we would get from outdoor planting.
It’s work, but not a lot of work. We rarely watered the raised beds. We covered them with frost-protection cloth at night and removed it in the morning. We installed dowels in channels sewn at the edge of the cloth strips to make it easier to lift and drape the covers. We’ll have to decide how to enrich the soil in the beds before this coming August (when the hothouse crops will still be in there!).
Hesitating for various reasons: tatsoi, carrots, scallions, minutina
More short-lived, consider succession planting: mache, arugula
Give it a try: cilantro
Last Red Butter Salanova lettuce, surrounded by new leaf spinach “Space.” Planted 30 Aug 2019. Really nice to have a few contrasting color leaves in winter salads. Napoli carrots. Planted 30 Aug 2019. Ate some as babies, will soon harvest the rest. Not sure of the advantage of “fresh” carrots in the winter if we can store carrots from the big garden. I’ve heard you can eat carrot tops, but I can’t bring myself to try.Tatsoi, spring planting. August planting didn’t make it through the winter. This is starting to bolt. Not real happy with tatsoi, although it’s better under cover. It isn’t eaten to death by flea beetles when grown in here. It does grow fast and has good flavor. A huge mound of claytonia. Planted 23 Aug 2019 and still going strong. Apparently self-seeds because it’s everywhere. Fun to pluck the little disc and snack on it. Everyone asked “What is this?” It should be more well known. Great performer if you can deal with the long stems (which are edible but hard to manage with a fork!) and the invasiveness. Tasty and fun to eat the little white flowers too!Scallions. Seed saved from garden. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Grew well although we don’t eat these often. Probably nice to have a row of it — need to thin it better!Kale mix, including the delicious kale buds. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Ate sparingly through the winter, growing big and providing buds now. Chard. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Ate sparingly through the winter and growing to full size now. Leaf Spinach. Space and Red Kitten varieties. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Preference for the Space variety as it’s not bolting yet. But both performed well through the winter. Winter Lettuce. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Fantastic through the winter. Growing into bigger heads now. More new spinach. And some unknown red plant? The last beautiful escarole. Franchi Sementi seeds. Planted 23 Aug 2019 and will probably eat this one tomorrow. Fantastic through the winter and expanded rapidly into these big beautiful heads with longer days. Plant more next season!New Astro arugula. August-planted arugula was great in the fall but didn’t make it through the winter. Some succession plantings maybe? We like it a lot. Minutina. Planted 12 Sept 2019. Not a huge fan. The leaves are very narrow and a bit coarse. This was the only thing eaten by some garden visitor – vole or rabbit? Hard to believe they ate this instead of the other lush greens.Mache, with some claytonia photo-bombing. Planted 19 Sept 2019. Did okay through the winter, but not as extraordinary as claytonia. Good to have both. It’s bolting now, so I’m pulling it out. I planted too much of it.A lone cilantro – where’d you come from? Maybe try a row in the fall and another planting early next year. Bed of savoyed spinach. Winter Bloomsbury and Olympia. Planted 12 and 19 September 2019. Doing well, but not sure they’ll take the heat on sunny days much longer.
Not pictured: Mizuna, which grew okay in the fall but died out in mid-winter and had to be removed. I don’t think I’d grow it again as it took space away from better performers.
