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.