I have always wanted to test out cold season gardening utilizing the combination of cold season crops such as radishes, beets, spinach and various lettuces and the protective cover of the greenhouse. With my budget small and a my space limited I made use of left over materials from a deck railing removal to build a simple triangle greenhouse. 
I then attached the frame to a existing raised bed planting box using a pair of door hinges. Finally I covered the frame in 2 mm thick plastic sheeting in order to create the desired greenhouse effect. Inside I planted cherry tomato and two pepper seedlings in the back row. While these are not typical cool season crops I was curious to see if they would survive under the makeshift protection of my greenhouse. For cool season crops I planted Detroit Dark Red Beets, Crimson Giant Radishes, Simpson Elite and Mesclun Lettuce, and finally Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach and Salad Select Spinach. Results so far:
So far the two pepper seedlings died during a recent cold snap but my tomato is still hanging in there. The radishes are already starting to sprout as well as some of the lettuce but I seen no signs of the spinach yet.
Since I had extra seeds after only planting those few I decided to also plant some of the other raised beds you can see in the picture above. I planted both varieties of lettuce and both types of spinach in those beds. Like in the greenhouse the lettuce has been the first to come up with no signs yet of the spinach. According to the emergence days on the seed packets this is not a surprising result and providing I sowed them correctly I should be seeing sprouts any day now. I am hoping to be able to compare the growth rate of the greenhouse plants to the exposed plants and see how they do against each other and if there is a observable difference.
I will update this blog on the this experiment as it unfolds.
Until next time my fellow environmentalists.
Josh
No comments:
Post a Comment