Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Winter Harvest

Dennis has mastered cold frame gardening, I believe. He seeds the cold frames with lettuce and spinach in September. As cold weather approaches, he surrounds the cold frames on three sides with bales of straw for insulation. When temperatures drop below freezing he covers the frames with old blankets and anchors the blankets with pieces of firewood to keep the wind from blowing the covers off.

Today the temperature is 27º, expected to fall to 13º tonight. The frames have been covered since yesterday afternoon and won't be uncovered until the weather warms again, maybe tomorrow.



Both frames also are protected on the north by our cedar windbreak.

Sorry, it's too cold today to open the frames so I can't include pictures of the growing lettuce and spinach, but here's the big basket of lettuce Dennis harvested yesterday, January 16. We ate some of it in a salad and filled two large bags for salads the rest of this week.


Our micro-scale farming efforts have provided a continuous supply of fresh food since last February, when Dennis brushed the snow off a cold frame, opened it and found plenty of spinach ready for a salad. For just a little effort we reap great rewards. For some reason I can't explain, the whole business delights us.

2 comments:

Jayhawk Fan said...

I can only imagine how lovely it must be to go out and find green lovelies for din-din!

Shirley said...

It sure beats going to the grocery store for some California lettuce.