With Thanks to the Obamas’ Winter Garden
Today’s Morning News Tribune included a small item on the White House garden. It is apparently flourishing throughout the icy Washington D.C. winter with the help of plastic fixed onto hoops. I immediately felt guilty for having abandoned my own 10’ x 6’ winter garden after the relatively minor setback of having my goats eat it down to nothing.
The winter garden before the goat attack
After looking into the cost and effort of building a protective structure to keep the goats and frost at bay, I set my sights on rehabilitating the greenhouse. After a year of being used as a storage facility by friends of my father, the owners of the stuff finally cleared it away and I decided to take the opportunity to put the greenhouse back into service.
The greenhouse
Reminiscing on my Costa Rica experience and the lettuce box that I observed there, I have begun creating a similar setup. My materials are simple and my methods easily replicated. Using scrap wood, a chop saw, and 1 ½ screws, I cobbled together three boxes about 18” wide, 8” deep, and 4’ to 5’ in length and lined each with clear, thick plastic using tack nails. I then set up two wooden crates that I’d acquired from a tile store, each of which was about 36” x 48” x 30” , and placed two 12’ x 6” boards on top to form a bench sturdy enough to support 200 pounds of wood and dirt.
My next steps will be to fill the bottoms with a few inches of pea gravel followed by a loose mix of peat, vermiculite, and potting mix. Into this I’ll plant the veggies that I started last August in my winter garden:
Cabbage – Early Jersey Wakefield
Kale – Red Russian
Onion – Evergreen Hardy White Bunching
Radish – Relish Cross Daikon Hybrid
Beets – Boro Hybrid
At present, the greenhouse is unheated in part due to the cost of the electricity that it would take to keep it warm. I am contemplating low cost heating systems such as small wood or oil stoves that would maintain it around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the meantime I’ll probably insulate the plants with an additional cover of plastic. So far, the weather has been on my side with persistant rain and lows around 45 degrees.
The larger plan is to use the greenhouse to grow both winter vegetables and starts for the summer garden. Hopefully, with about 0.25 acre in cultivation I can produce enough for year ‘round home consumption plus extra for sale. I will also need to set up a propagation area to grow the large number of ornamental and native plants that I will need to acquire to complete my landscaping projects.
En route to the greenhouse, I passed my Helleborus foetidus with expectant green buds,
and the three, six inch high Sarcoccocca confusa loaded with tiny white blooms, well worth getting down on my knees to smell.
These small things do not yet fill my garden in the way that I wish they would, but then every journey must start with a single step.