What are you interested in? (it's a jungle in here!)

Hi
What time of year are you growing the vines in your GH & Tomatoes ?

Hi Cheryl, this year has been my first with growing in 2 "hoop houses" that I bought on e-bay, so very experimental and we weren't able to put them up as early as I would have liked. My hope is to extend my usually short season (here in the upper peninsula of Michigan we like to say we have 11 months of winter and 1 month when the ice is very poor for skating...)

At any rate, I did plant the tomatoes, cukes, peppers, green beans and sweet potatoes a bit earlier this year than I normally would -- the tender plants get put in around June 1st outdoors, and these I planted in early to mid May, next year I should be able to put them in starting in April. My hope is that especially the tomatoes and peppers will be able to last longer into the fall -- every year we get one or two early frosts, anywhere from early Sept. to early Oct. and scramble around trying to cover the plants up, because then we nearly always have several weeks of nice weather. One of the biggest benefits has turned out to be that the tomatoes inside the hoop houses haven't been affected by the late blight, which always gets my outside plants.

In Texas, I imagine you have the opposite problem and have trouble growing anything in the middle of the summer! It makes you realize what a big country this actually is...

You are so right .. this year we had 19 days over 100 in a row & no rain... kills off most every thing I just try to keep things alive till it starts to cool and hope to get a few more tomatoes & peppers

Sandy I look forward to hearing about some of your overwintering success stories. Can you believe it's almost time to start getting plants ready for winter? UGH!!!

Well, we can only hope they are "success stories."

I can definitely believe it's time, we had frost on our roof and car windshield 2 mornings ago, although the garden seemed to have been untouched. Quite a change from the heat wave we had in July and August -- now I just hope we have a nice long autumn ! (a few years back we had a beautiful fall season, cool, crisp, sunny -- and I wasted nearly the entire thing by spending so much of my mental energy dreading the oncoming winter that I never really enjoyed it; I vowed to never do that again !! )

Sandy what a great reminder to enjoy the moment of luxury!

Absolutely! I am thoroughly enjoying the cooler-than-usual temperatures we're having here right now. Cool and rainy (YEA, I don't have to run out and spend the morning watering!), but with no overly cold overnight temps. Heaven! But I really should go collect all the cherry tomatoes that are starting to fall on the ground...heh, heh, ended up with too many cherry tomato plants...AGAIN!

Sandy, ok now that winter has hit your part of the world and that nasty snow
how about an update on your greenhouse

Yes, please! I'm very curious to hear how the hoop house worked out.

do tell

LOL, sorry for being away from here lately, some work and family issues have been taking more than their share of my time.

I have photos to get off my camera and post, but will say that the hoophouses are proving to be quite winter-worthy -- we've had a couple of pretty good snowstorms now, about 8 inches of snow each time and some high winds with the first, and all is well with the structures. I did use a couple of 2x4 boards for a little extra support in each one to help distribute the weight of the snow until it would slide off as the temperature warmed up inside.

My one disappointment with these is that the covers seem to already be deteriorating from the sunlight, so apparently they were not UV protected after all. My plan in the spring is to fasten some wooden framing to the outsides of the ends so that I can fasten some regular plastic over the frames to replace the covers. I didn't expect the covers to last forever, but would have thought I'd get a couple of seasons from them. I actually haven't ventured out through the snow for the last week or so to check inside, but did harvest some very nice lettuce a couple of weeks ago, after having some pretty bitter weather (in the 20s and high teens) -- it was actually some of the best leaf lettuce I've ever had from the garden, very crisp and tender. There still is chard and more lettuce and mache that may or may not be still usable, will have to get out there and shovel the snow away from the doors to find out! I believe that the chard, even if it dies back, will likely grow back up once the weather starts getting warmer, as I had some plants overwinter in the main part of the garden last year.

Happy holiday wishes to everyone!

Sandy

You might consider using a solar pool cover instead of the lighter weight plastic. The one I bought to help insulate my GH is UV stabilized and they're not terribly expensive if you look around. Kind of like heavy duty bubble pack.

Thanks for the suggestion, Woofie -- I'l have to look into that!

This is where I got mine. It has been about 4 years now and it's holding up just fine so far.
http://www.pools.com/catalog/C...