April 12, 2010 Gardening With Row Covers
My goal this gardening season is to get some small hoops up over at least one of my garden beds. I’ve been reading about how to grow greens through the winter and it’s really about two warm and comfy layers – a warm row cover and a greenhouse. It’s simple enough to create a small hoop house covered in greenhouse plastic. Even I should be able to construct that!
And it’s equally easy to use row covers. You can see a couple of my garden sections covered with a light row cover in this picture. These row covers add some protection against the cold. It’s not a lot of protection (these are very light row covers) but it’s enough to protect against the cold nights for my lettuce and broccoli.
Using these light row covers at this time of year is a good idea – mostly because they keep out pests and blowing weed seeds. If you’re not using row covers, give it a shot. There’s nothing to it. They allow in water and sunlight and keep out the bad stuff!
We’ll see how it goes this winter when I build the layer system. But for now, the light row covers are helping my plants get a jump start.
- 8 comments
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Lee
said
Wow, you’ve really made progress since I last visited your site! Wonder if corn gluten would work as a nitrogen source on my citrus. They need it! Where do you buy corn gluten?
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sjones71
said
Hi Lee. My guess is that the corn gluten meal would work well for your citrus. Chances are too that your chickens have eaten some of this corn gluten meal! Since the stuff is getting more popular, I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding it. I am not sure that the big garden stores sell it, but I got mine at a local garden center. You’ll find it with the fertilizer. Best of luck!
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Heather's Garden
said
I saw a post on how to do row covers, seems like it’s just pounding heavy duty stakes of your choice (like rebar) into the ground on each side at even intervals and then putting flexible pvc piping over them. I think you can do it.
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sjones71
said
You bet Heather! The row covers actually don’t require any hooping. You can just lay that over your crops. But the hoophouse is what you are describing. I think I can do that too!
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Elra
said
Sounds like fabulous idea.
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Lee
said
I keep checking in hoping to see those beds filled with growing things. Are you traveling?
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sjones71
said
Howdy Lee. I know! Bad garden blogger! If you are interested in what’s happening with my garden, you can follow me on twitter. it’s twitter.com/sjones71. I prattle about more than gardening there, but I do a lot of quick updates, photos and videos. The blog just hasn’t been calling me as much lately. I will be putting up some new pictures of the garden and yes.. it is fairly bursting now! The garlic is nuts, broccoli is crazy, lettuce bolting here and there, peas bountiful, pole beans starting to climb, peppers in. It looks very different. In any event, thank you for commenting! I’ll have some blog posts up soon. I’m working on one now on the science behind compost teas that may be interesting or infuriating… we’ll see.
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plant descriptions
said
Such a nice way of gardening with row I really inspired by your method and I agree with you, I will apply in same way on my garden. Thank you for provide me this useful information.