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Monday, December 13, 2010

Hoop House Planting


In mid November we built a simple pair of hoops over one of our raised beds.  We have not tried this before but are taking the year round garden attempt seriously, so thought we would give it a try.  You might ask, where does one find instructions about this sort of endeavor for this climate?  Long story short, we can't find any.
Then, before we could decide exactly which seeds to plant, it snowed like crazy.  It got really cold (like 10 degrees F cold) and we thought, hey look at that...row cover is awfully tough stuff.  We decided to try skipping the plastic.

 And then, like it often does here in Utah, it got pretty warm for a week and all the snow in the valley melted.  The soil temp has stayed above 40 degrees F for 2 days so I've gone and planted 1 row of Bloomsdale Spinach and 1 row of Sputnik Arugula.  I layered on a thin bed of straw and buttoned up the fabric.  I'm promising myself I won't look again until Christmas.
I'm also promising myself I won't be sad if all that I see is straw after 2 weeks.  It is an experiment after all.

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Winter, finally (and seriously)

I planned to start this blog last spring as my garden flew into action, but then got into the actual work of gardening and abandoned the task. However, today its winter, really winter. I'm wearing long underwear and sitting under a blanket and I'm still cold.
Today is the shortest day of the year so from here on in it gets better. I look forward to longer days, that's for sure. But I'll also tuck in and enjoy winter's freeze and snow, it does mean skiing after all. Maybe more importantly is the snow pack - without snow there isn't water for the West.
The end of the year and the solstice are a good time to think back on the last 365. I have no reason to complain and feel really lucky about the last year and really hopeful about the year to come.