Preparing Our First Winter Garden
For years we have talked about having a winter garden and we are finally making it happen. While grocery shopping the other day I noticed how expensive organic produce was at the grocery store even when it was in season! We haven’t bought much much produce in the last 6 months since we grow a lot of our own so this really made us realize just how much money we have been saving. And so we were even further inspired by our efforts of spring and summer gardening and put forth some extra energy to get set up for some year-round (winter garden.)
Back in the spring we came across a couple of nice vinyl windows for $5 each. One blew over during a wind storm and busted (so sad) but we used a few older windows to replace it and completed our cold frames for forcing seeds and essentially maintaining a mini greenhouse. Our cold frame is simply a wooden box with a hinged window top. We framed in the window with 2 x 4′s and connected it to the box with hinges. The frame that uses the older windows used three to make up the lid but it was easy to screw them together….just work with what you have.
Our next project is to build a hoop house over one of the garden beds in the back yard. We’ll share more on that soon, hopefully!
The weather is still mild here in Eugene but the summer crop is past its peak and on a steady decline. We started basil, radishes, Romaine and a second type of lettuce in the cold frames. We also added some 4″ pots to one of them and planted cauliflower, and two varieties of brocolli. These will go into the future hoop house once they have rooted. It’s all an experiment…we are having fun just doing things and figuring it out along the way. Learning when to plant successive crops (and exactly what to plant and when) would be awesome but I don’t know if I will ever be that organized. I guess it will just have to fall into place because the balance found itself. In the meantime….we are eating enough food to make it worthwhile and it’s fun. What else would we be doing?? Watching TV?? blech!
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