Grow Your Own – They Call The Wind Mariah, But Right Now We Just Might Have Another Name In Mind
by John Weckerle
Here we go again... Note: the door was not yet attached.
The recent storm that graciously dropped 8 to 10 inches of snow and a bit of rain apparently dropped something else – the hoop house at Bed 5, again. We followed some of the recommendations of Senior Structural Engineering Correspondent Wilson and reinforced the uprights, revised the hoop/end frame attachment scheme, and were confident that we could get the cool weather vegetables in. Unfortunately, both we and our subject matter expert failed to realize that the strain would now be transferred to the corners of the bed, which were unfortunately not up to the task. Are we doomed?
Well, possibly, but not with respect to the garden. At the recommendation of Senior Disaster Recovery Correspondent Wilson (we all wear multiple hats around here), we’ve purchased two large L-brackets for each end of the board, and we’ll put it back together using those and some lag screws. We’ll also drive some rebar into the ground in front of and behind the horizontal board to help minimize any flexing that may result from wind load on the front. We hope to get this done soon, as the various bush beans we started under lights are beginning to flower.
At this point, it seems almost pointless to cover the structure with plastic for the Spring season, so we’ll start out with cool weather plantings – collard and mustard greens, various bush beans, kale, spinach, snow peas, and broccoli to start. In the meantime, we’ll get our tomatoes a-sprouting. We’ve decided to go with Romas for sauce and several heirloom varieties this year: Mortgage Lifter, Black Krim, Black Cherry, and Brandywine. We’ll have the structure ready to receive plastic in advance of the fall season, into which we hope to extend our growing efforts long enough to reap a few tomatoes – and then of course it’ll be time for cool-weather crops again.