The pods have descended
Just in time for winter, a rambling post about mini greenhouse pods:
The little one, over the small 2×8 lettuce bed
And the first larger one, over one of the 4×16 beds.
The frost killed the last of the tomatoes this weekend. (About time eh?)
I removed the vines, cages and trellis, cleaned all remnants of fallen leaves a tomatoes from the soil surface then worked in some more composted dairy manure. This bed has a lot of open room in it and I will transplant the latest lettuce and spinach starts into it for the winter. There already is a stand of lettuce and a few odd broccoli plants. I almost forgot, there is a little Chinese kale, whatever that turns out to be.
The mechanics of setting up a low tunnel or mini hoop-house is pretty simple.
Buy one 10′ section of 1″ PVC and cut it into 10 1′ sections.
Buy 5 10′ sections of 1/2″ pvc and cut a foot off the end of each to leave 9′.
Using electrical conduit brackets, secure the foot long sections of 1″ PVC evenly along the outside of the bed
bend the 5 9′ sections of 1/2″ pvc into the 1″ sections you just fastened to the bed.
There you have it- a covered wagon frame ready for 4 mill contractors plastic.
The plastic is 12′ wide so it amply covers the hoops.
Pull it tight, tuck it in and weight with bricks (for now) and you have a tidy cover for nights below freezing. While the fall/winter garden plants can mostly tolerate a little frost, this keeps the ground warmer and helps them along a bit (and for a bit longer).
BTW I removed the cover before I went to work (it went from 28 to 71 today and the “greenhouse effect” would cook the plants eventually).
(The smaller bed cover’s frame was a little simpler- I cut a 10′ piece of 1/2″ pvc in half, then drove 4 short pieces of scrap rebar into the ground near each corner, then threaded the pvc over the ends of the rebar.)
Meanwhile……
I was in the mountains yesterday and have a lot of work to do in the garden to do after the first freeze, so no material posts with be forthcoming for a couple of days. (Yeah, as if any are “material”.)
Meanwhile, back at “the mountains”………
and
This is November
But I am still picking tomatoes, at least for another couple of days as our first freeze is looming.
Some of the plots are looking tired, but the sprawling Marigolds make for a nice curtain call for the summer garden.
The gourd tower is looking downright pitiful and needs to be put down for the winter.
There are still beans on the vine but most that are left won’t have time to mature.
And now for the good news
Carrots
Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbage
and turnip greens
I guess we’re still doing ok 😉
Well houses and wild hogs
It is ok for winter to come to Georgia now; insulation is up in the well house and some amount of freezing temperatures can now be tolerated. There are still some finishing touches to be done but practically speaking the project is 99% complete (paint not withstanding).
Unfortunately the entire span between the cabin and the well house was thoroughly rooted sometime in the last few days; this is shaping up to be worse than the winter of 2006-7 from the standpoint of hog damage.
The scene from in front of the well house:
And looking back up from the cabin:
What does this? Wild hogs move in and root up the ground looking for dinner – mainly roots, tubers and shoots just under the surface. But how?
Take a guess; to help you I’ve posted this clue, a close up of one of the guilty parties from 3 years ago:
Sigh…..
It looks like the hog wars are on again.
Cohutt’s followers cherish his content
No, seriously, they do……. well, at least one does.
If you haven’t run a blog before, you might not be aware of all the comment spammers out there. I certainly wasn’t.
These people or bots or whatever would like to post a useless comment and leave a link to their site, often something that would teach you how to earn 1000% trading currencies, maybe procure meds without a prescription for a penny a pill and sometimes even offer a secret ancient herbal concoction for male enhancement. Not that I’m against enhancement or anything but I’m quite happy to let Akismet save me the trouble of cleaning out the comments regularly.
I make a habit to share my spam fans’ comments with Mrs cohutt when they are posted in English, as they are almost always oddly amusing.
Two examples follow, both posted under the same user name but with different and very distant foreign email domains.
This one was a reply to the artichoke post:
“Wonderful blog! I truly love how it? s easy on my eyes as well as the data are well written. I am wondering how I can be notified whenever a new post has been made. I have subscribed to your rss feed which need to do the trick! Have a nice day!”
And this one in the heirloom lettuce post:
“Greetings, this is a genuinely absorbing web blog and I have cherished studying many of the content and posts contained on the web site, keep up the outstanding work and desire to read a good deal more stimulating articles in the future.”
Cherished.     AND stimulating.
I’m truly touched.
😉
33
33
(The forecast low tonight. )
But it’s OK, these three don’t have to worry
(L-R) Napoleon Sweet Bell, Jalapeno, Habanero
The word is that pepper plants can last several years and be substantially more productive after the first year. It makes sense considering the big one started from seed indoors last February and really didn’t jump up production until mid August. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens when I start with a 6′ pepper tree next spring.
Disclaimer: Mrs c has yet to issue a final decree on my brilliant pepper plan.
Peter Piper
I’m not.
But I did some good today; a modest start included a little fresh arugula to top off the evening’s salad and a few jalapenos that just looked ready.
We’ve had several inches or rain in the last 3 days ahead of a cold front moving in tomorrow. More of a cool front really I guess, but with the temperatures falling into the low/mid 30s it was time to pot up the pepper plants.
Before I did any digging it was obvious I needed to lighten the load some; by now all my good pepper plants had been staked and/or caged to avoid another branch shearing incident. I harvested most of the rest of the jalapenos then cut 15 good bell peppers off my largest and most productive “Napoleon Sweet” plant.
Both plants are now potted up and ready for winter in the south facing sun room window; I moved a small habanero plant in earlier and it seems to have adjusted pretty well so far.
Why? Peppers are perennials in their “native habitat” ie where it doesn’t ever get much below 40 any time of day or night in any season. Keeping some plants healthy all winter will allow for not only an earlier start to 2011’s harvest, the total harvest for the season should be substantially higher.
😉
The artichoke stood alone
Phase 1 of the great 2010 north Georgia artichoke experiment concluded Saturday.
The verdict:
You can grow artichokes in north Georgia in a single season.
I chose “Imperial star PVP” from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as it was purported to be a single season producer. Apparently most varieties need a certain number of cooling hours before they bloom; I figured I’d give these a shot when I ran across them.
The location (in hindsight) was terrible; they were against a the fence with a Tommy Toe cherry tomato plant from hell just to the south. The late afternoon sun was blocked by the fence and the Goliath tomato vine obscured a lot of the late morning sun, especially after July. The poor plant closest to the tomato plant was overrun and stunted.
I understand that the artichoke crowns can be moved after the tops are killed by a freeze; my intent is to move both of these to a better area in the boxwood garden.
Anyway, the single smallish but tasty ‘choke found its way into the kitchen Saturday evening. Mrs cohutt devoured the bounty and seemed to enjoy it; the one petal (?) I was granted had a very nice fresh flavor.
One surprise: I expected the stem to be tough and more woody or sinewy than it turned out to be. I’m not really sure why and honestly i didn’t put a lot of thought into it beforehand. I was just surprised at how soft and easy to cut it tuned out to be.
The “prize” of the 2010 garden just before harvest:
Heirloom Lettuce
Now that it is FINALLY cooling off some, the lettuce I’ve been trying to get started for several weeks has perked up. The Arugula sown diectly back in mid September is doing extremely well and it has been frustrating waiting for the lettuce to catch up. We have discovered that while arugula is extremely pungent when freshly cut, it lacks any of the bitterness of the grocery store variety.
As of last night, we’ve had a couple of modest salads 100% from the garden and are looking forward to several weeks of salad bliss.
Last year I bought an heirloom lettuce sampler pack from Seed Savers Exchange and the seeds are now providing their third “half season” of lettuce (fall, spring, fall). This stuff is as pretty as it is tasty.
Some samples (with Arugula in the background):
(Note: The plant in the bottom right corner is actually a volunteer potato plant; i must have left one in the ground last summer. ;))
Behind a small cluster of broccoli some young and more adequately spaced heads are forming:
These are the varieties included in the sampler if you want more information (and wish to see better picture samples)
Australian Yellowleaf
This is a lot like the simpson varieties but a huge leaf and an unusually bright green color
Bronze Arrowhead
same as with the deer tongue- a fairly robust & think leaf in normal conditions made for a tender winter leaf in the window….
Forellenschuss
Fantastic romaine with interesting color- bronze specks on a delicate light green leaf. It looks like it is going bad at first glance with all the gold/brownish spots.
Lollo Rossa
Tasty; we are bad to snip new growth off of this one before it matures. Nice sweet flavor when cut this way
Pablo
Beautiful, tasty, tender. Top of the leaves are one color and the bottom are another, looks almost painted
Red Velvet
Deep red, (what we grew over the winter was almost purple) Tender tasty colorful, not bitter
Reine des Glaces
The best part of this is the heart of the head once you’ve worked on the outer leaves.  The inner leaves are curled together and are the sweetest tastiest morsels out of any of these; they had a nice crunch and are 3-d as they keep their shape after you separate the individual leaves of the core head.
Behind cohutt's fence 