Cold Climate Gardening in Zone 3. Learn how to compete with the challenges of vegetable gardening in a short season and how you can extend your season without a lot of expense and even grow food in the wintertime.
Beautiful build!! I'm in zone 3 Wisconsin and I built a cattle panel house 3 years ago for my daughter's chickens. I have a few suggestions. 1st when you close up for the season give the ridgepole some support. Most winters you won't need the support. Our first winter was a normal winter and the structure held up beautifully 👍. The winter of 22/23 was a real monster in our area. The house held up great until a freak storm in April squashed it like a bug. No chickens living there at the time. 2nd the people that owned my home before me left a roll of reflective livestock fence fabric. Its not expensive and worked great for securing the plastic. Much easier on the plastic than any ropes. It spreads out the pressure. 3rd put a vent on each end above the doorway. Your end walls and doorways are much nicer than mine. I'm a hack 😊. Lastly I think putting rebar in the plastic is brilliant!! You guys did real good 👍
It is too soon to know how long it will extend my season. By the time we had it ready to plant in the spring, it was almost time to plant the heat-loving plants outdoors. We haven't had our first fall frost yet and hopefully won't for a while. While the hoop house gets very hot in the sun, it does cool down as much inside as outside at night. I have put a couple black barrels of water in it to absorb the heat by day and radiate it at night. I may have to put a little electric heater in it when a frost is predicted. Next year, I will be able to give you a better answer. 😃
At 5:04, why are you screwing into the center of one of the pipes? I thought the concept was to screw it the other way around to support the barrier from falling in.
You are right, the screws would probably offer more support if screwed from the inside out. I think he did it from the outside because it was easier with the screw gun. You'll notice he just barely put the screw into the pipe, leaving as much as possible hanging out to support the lid.
Thank you for exploring the economics of filling a raised bed . I tried a mix of twigs and small brush with the leaves at the base to resolve the compacting issue I had in past. Also no cardboard. Small amount of composted manure added to the thin top layer of "recycled" potting soil. Lettuce and green beans did very well, and amazingly two vigorous tomato plants.(from New England USA)
Ok I missed something here. What is the wick? Looks like osmosis, since nothing appears to wick the moisture into the soil. How does the water wick into the soil?
I am using the soil itself for the wick. In each container a small portion of soil extends to the bottom of the container to act as a wick. In my favorite 5 gal wicking tubs, either with a false bottom or with two pails stacked, I have a pencil holder filled with soil which extends to the bottom of the water reservoir. You need to moisten all the soil in the container. Then when you fill the reservoir in the bottom with water through the fill tube, the water will seep into the soil in the pencil holder, and "wick" (maybe that isn't the correct technical word) up into the soil above the water compartment. With the soda can example, the soil between the cans accomplishes the same result. As I noted in the video, the milk jug example really doesn't seem to work. Hopefully, that clarifies it for you.
I have used the 2 bucket wicking buckets now for 10 years. At first I would remove the potting soil every fall and save it in barrels and refill the buckets in the spring. Now I don't even remove the soil in the fall. I dump out the water reservoir pull out the root mass and let the potting soil freeze dry over the winter. In the spring they are nice and dry, I just amend the soil with my new recipe (it changes from year to year, depending on the RU-vid vids I watch over the winter). In a 5 gallon bucket I grow two Tomato plants (determinate or indeterminate no difference in the space they need or water requirements). I will also plant 4-5 cucumber plants in a 5 gallon bucket and 3 pepper plants. by using this method for these plants, my tomatoes will grow taller than my garage roof (15ft) and my cucumbers will get 12ft tall before I run out of trellis to anchor them too. Location is Saskatchewan Canada, zone 3B.
Good video!! I live in a mobile home. My bedroom gets very warm. I grew yellow cherry tomatoes in my south facing bedroom window. All in 4 gallon buckets. My fruit production was weak. Im a rookie at this and im sure the plants needed nutrition. On the other hand in the coldest part of winter i had beautiful plants to admire.
I just ordered one of these exact fire pits from Walmart. Received it yesterday afternoon and assembled it, looking forward to using it on the fourth if it doesn’t rain here! Thanks for the video!
Can you harvest the pea Sprouts a second time after the first cut? And how do you keep the peas out of water when you put it on the bottom tray? Or are they immediately submerged in the water?
Basically there is only one harvest although you don’t have to harvest them all at once. The peas go in the top tray. Only the roots go down into the water in the bottom tray.
This was the best test I've seen so far on RU-vid. Most people don't specify they are growing an indeterminate variety in their tower. Thanks! I look forward to seeing if you come up with something else to make it even better. 😊
So glad to see another video! I hope you are well. I look forward to your wise economical videos. They are so easy to relate to. Thank you. More please!
Very informative! This kind of collapse right here is exactly why I decided to go with a separate, buried "cistern chamber" (basically, a perforated, upside down container with a filler pipe) on my wicking tub, instead of an Earthbox-style false bottom like that. Water is dense and even the lightest, fluffiest potting mix can get VERY heavy when saturated with it. Even with the added screws on the later versions, that flimsy plastic could still collapse. I'm surprised this one lasted 4 years before it failed.
I help kill off soil gnats, fungus and weed seed by putting the moist planting mix in 1-gallon zip-lock brand FREEZER bags, leave a corner open . Lay bag flat and Microwave it 2 minutes, flip over, microwave another 2 minutes (should be steamy and warm now), flip and mwave 1-min, flip and mwave another 1minute, seal the zip,ock. As the steam collapses, the bag will appear to be 'vacuum packed', this way you can tell if it is still sanitized or not after storage.
meadow creature makes the deepest broad forks14- and 16" deep on the market . a limiting factor fro a 64 year old is shoulder integrity. this new hack which allows deeper broad forking with no shoulder strain : I took a roll of 2" nylon mesh (quite light weight) I cut off approximately 10 feet and tied the ends to the tips of the handles (double half hitch) then sunk the 14" fork as deep into the compacted earh as it would go (this took about 1 minute of intensive rocking as it was so hard . Then I walked back and put the 2" webbing behind my butt then gently threw my butt down and back and the handle effortlessly came back from 90 to about 70 degrees from there gripped the handles and I I effortlessly brought them back to 45 degrees bringing in a satisfying chuck of ground (busting te bard pan)BTW I keep the nylon webbing in place with rubber bands .
What is going to happen next tripple cup method? I am a novice at tomato planting. I got me little tomato plants from grocery store, dug a hole and put some potting mix and watered. The results were good, plenty of tomatoes for my needs. Very basic and novice approach and got good results.
Double cupping is a waste of time. I use exactly same cups but never double cup them. Place you cupped seedlings in a tray, bottom water them via the tray and that's it.
Ofc it’s a waste of time. Just keep the cups in a tray and water them from bottom. Also get clear cups so you can inspect the roots and know when it’s time to top up.
It is possible that the yield was reduced because the total access to nutrients via volume of soil is lower when in a contained space. I'm curious if anyone knows how far deep and wide that Roots will spread when potatoes are grown in soil good for potatoes but in a traditional Garden row or bed. If potatoes have any kind of fungal relationship with their roots, then potatoes in a traditional garden bed might be able to draw nutrients from much further away than the plant via the way that symbiotic fungus can bring nutrients to the plant. I'm not sure if this happens with certain garden plants but it certainly happens all over the place in a natural ecosystem
You can definitely do that. I like to have the air space at the bottom for the cup to drain into so you never need to worry about the roots sitting in water.
So you would start these under lights indoors in late Feb or early March? In order to have a growing season that yields? And plant outdoors in early May? Something like that?
I really enjoyed this video and how you did the troubleshooting on video. I also got an answer to my question regarding how to support the base so as not to crush the yogurt tubs I plan on using for the air pocket containers.
