cold!!

37* F outside this morning. A light snow is falling but not accumulating. I wish I had covered my winter bed last night, but did not. So this morning I went down to the garden and pulled the plastic cover over the hoops. I also covered my fall lettuce bed with Agribon light weight row cover. It was a painful task. I was reminded the hard way that I need to wear mittens at that temperature. (Especially if I am taking pictures.) My hands were so cold. They stung for 5 minutes after I went back into the house. Ouch!!

But now the covers are on. We're going to have chilly temperatures for the next couple of days and then it will warm back up. Its been such a balmy fall so fall that it is an abrupt cool down for us. The winter garb isn't a habit yet. By next month, today's temperatures will seem warm as our average December low is 28*.

I am covering my beds when it falls below about 40*F. I have found that the greens I am growing are fine with about 25* to 30*F, so I'm not too concerned with keeping the covers on yet.

My neighbors have been keeping all of their beds covered for a couple weeks now. They have watermelons and peppers growing still. Maybe I'll try that next year.

I've been asking gardeners about their experience with hoops and different coverings. My neighbors found that the PVC hoops are not strong enough and collapse under the snow load we get here. I have also heard that PVC has a chemical that degrades greenhouse plastic covers. My neighbors switched this year to galvanized metal that they bent into shape. These are more expensive than PVC. I'll see how my PVC works. I'm glad I only tried one bed for my first (experimental) year with winter hoops. The row cover I am using is actually a very light weight insect barrier (Agribon AG-15). Not really going to provide much warmth, but I figure better than nothing. Its 10 feet wide, so it easily covers my bed while lying flat. I could buy some winter weight row cover (10x50ft AG-19), but I plan to harvest all the lettuce outside of my plastic tunnel soon.

I noticed that the standard 10 ft wide Agribon product wouldn't be wide enough cover 10 ft long PVC hoops. It looks like the 100x13ft extra heavy weight AG-70 would be a good choice if I wanted to use cloth instead of plastic. At $124 for 100ft, the Agribon product is a bit less expensive than the greenhouse plastic film I have, which is $152 per 100 ft.

I'd love to hear comments on products that other gardeners are using!

hoops ready for covering

My winter bed is ready to be covered. The weather has been beautiful so far this month. Perfect for growing a bed full of greens. Today, we are expecting more warm sunny weather, but Thursday, temperatures are going down. I'll get out the plastic and cover the bed today.

Not sure if I should put the gnomes in the winter tunnel. They've worked so hard all summer - may be ready for a rest from gardening.

covered kale

My kale is now covered. I bought some galvanized stainless wire and made hoops and then covered them with row cover and secured with plastic pegs. I picked a good batch of it a couple weeks ago (photo below), but ended up composting it because there were too many holes in the leaves for it to be appetizing. Hopefully the cover will help. Of course, it doesn't get rid of the caterpillars that are already on the leaves. It just prevents the moths from laying more eggs.

On the far side of the covered kale are my baby broccoli plants. These are also being eaten, presumably by the cabbage white caterpillars. I will have to cover these plants too. My next project....

I looked hard, but didn't find any green caterpillars. Since I have noticed many cabbage white butterflies, I assume this caterpillar is who is eating my brassica. The caterpillar I did find is pictured below. It is tiny and like an inchworm, but I don't know what type of worm it is.


Brassicaceae
Kale (Brassica oleracea, Acephala Group)
cabbage white butterflies (Pieris rapae)

tucked in for a frost

I found some gardening fabric in my garage from some previous project, so I went ahead and covered all of my plants last night. I pulled apart some thin wire edging fences and used them as hoops. Scattered frost was predicted for the Boston area, but as it turned out, my garden did not frost. The lowest I saw on my thermometer (7 am) was 37 degrees F.