Snow!

After the stormy and windy weather this week, I need to do a bit of repair to the winter hoop tunnels, as the sides had loosened up a bit in the strong gusts. Plus, because the weather was so warm (14 C in our backyard on Tuesday!) I had to pop open the ends of the tunnels to allow for ventilation - in mid-December! Crazy.. anyway, I just tossed the plastic back overtop of the tunnels and used our homemade snap clamps (see earlier post) to secure the cover and added some rocks and logs to weigh the sides down.

Well, I just took these photos - 3 cm of show has fallen and it's finally beginning to look like winter.. I only left the top of the frame open for a few moments so that I could take the photo - note the snowflakes falling as I snapped away!

Assuming the long range forecast predicts more of the same weather, I hope to 'tighten' up the hoop tunnels this weekend so that they are finally ready for the cold. To winterize them, we twist both ends like a piece of hard candy and pull them tight, tying each end to a piece of rebar stuck in the ground.

As you can see, this tunnel is still covered pretty loosely, but it's still extremely effective - underneath, 1-foot wide rows of spinach, arugula and mixed mustard greens are going strong! It's amazing how hardy some of these veggies are!

On another note, I'd love to hear some of your suggestions for what to grow for 2011. This whole year has been about writing and photographing 'the book' and all garden planning has revolved around that.. now that we only have one photo shoot left - a winter shoot - 2011 will allow us to get back to growing whatever we want, whenever we want! The kids say 2000 sq feet of corn.. well, I'm open to a corn patch - it's been 2 years since the raccoons made crop circles in our last corn crop - but I'd like to try some new veggies/varieties.. so, what do you like to grow?

Happy Gardening!