OUR SUN-HEATED GREENHOUSE

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But that's not what the following excerpts from the Nearings' latest book (they've written more than 50) are all about. These excerpts are about the sun-heated greenhouse that Helen and Scott use to supply themselves with fresh green vegetables right through the heavy snows and frigid winds of a New England winter.

The Nearings really know how to feed themselves well in a rugged climate without using energy—intensive gardening systems, as the following snippets from their new book prove ... and we hope this tiny taste of Helen and Scott's genius will inspire you to run right out and buy their new $6.95 paperback—Building and Using Our Sun-Heated Greenhouse—for your very own. It's worth far more than its price.

We began our winter gardening in an unheated greenhouse almost by accident. A small seedling (or seed) got lost under a bench, and in early January, going by chance into the ice-cold building, we found a flourishing, lush, and sizable lettuce plant growing through a clump of dry leaves. It had survived, unwatered and untended, through several months of outside freezing, in a sheltered but chill corner of a cold glassed-in building.

If this could happen, uncared for and unbeknownst, why could not more lettuces, and other plants, survive, under better conditions, still without artificial heat? We were launched on an experimental period of greenhouse building and planting that has provided us with fresh green things through thirty winters of freezing and below-zero weather.

Without question, plant germination and growth is checked by cold weather, and only certain plants can survive. Very low temperatures will kill almost any growing thing eventually. But there is a wide margin, and our experiments pointed up the plants that will not be killed by low temperatures.

Almost all of our gardening experience has been in the North Temperate Zone, taking advantage of summer sunshine when we can get it, and taking cover as cold blasts from the north and east strip the foliage from trees and crumple down green crops in the garden. One of our chief aims in gardening is to find those plants that can remain succulent and edible throughout the coldest weather.

TIMID IN THE BEGINNING

We were timid in the beginning of our early experiments with winter gardening. Getting up around daylight and going into the greenhouse at the point of maximum possible frost damage, we saw plants of lettuce and Chinese cabbage and celery, escarole, collards, chard, and radishes limp and wilted as though their life span were near its end. Going back a few hours later, after the sun had had an hour or two to melt the frost on the greenhouse roof and windows, we found the semi-wilted plants revived, standing up sturdy and strong.

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