OUR SUN-HEATED GREENHOUSE

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A GREENHOUSE EXTENDS THE GROWING SEASON

There are many weeks in a New England gardening season when temperatures hover around freezing. A spring fog or an autumn haze holds the temperature at or near freezing. We guess that during the 120 days from April 1 to June 10 and from August 25 to October 15, our garden may have around five killing frosts and another dozen mornings with white frosts on garden paths. Any one of the killing frosts will eliminate or cripple sensitive seedlings. All of the near-frost nights will retard germination and growth.

A can, bottle, box, or basket—or even some newspaper or a light mulch—over each exposed plant will tend to reduce the frost damage, but a greenhouse provides exactly the needed protection for everything inside its four walls. If we have perhaps 105 frost-free days and another 120 days during which a bit of glass will ward off frost damage, an unheated greenhouse in our climate belt will provide adequate frost protection for at least 32 weeks of the 52-week year.

VARIETY OF PLANTS

Our year-round greenhouse continually contains a wide variety of plants; some more hardy, some less. In it at each season-spring, summer, autumn, winter-there are plants in various stages of development. Seeds, tiny seedlings, or mature plants occupy every square foot of the greenhouse. Some seeds, recently sowed, are not yet germinated. Some will make the salad for the day's evening meal. Some, like tomatoes or peppers, remain in the greenhouse for months. All these plants, in various stages, will be transplanted, consumed, and replaced in their turn. Before the greenhouse soil gets its next crop of plants or seeds, it will be reworked, refertilized, and either reseeded or occupied by seedlings raised in another section of the greenhouse, and reset in the recently vacated soil.

Each month and season will find some variety of plant life playing its allocated role in providing the edibles that make up our daily diet. The sequences are carefully planned to produce the maximum in food value from each square foot of greenhouse soil, and all tend to extend the growing season.

THE WINTER GREENHOUSE

New England wintertime has usually been ruled out as ungardenable unless it is undertaken in artificially heated glass houses. Our greenhouse is unheated save by direct and indirect rays from the sun. Nevertheless we eat out of our sunheated greenhouse right through the roughest and toughest winters. How do we do it? We have learned how to live with and prevail against winter's hazards.

The first hazard, of course, is the cold weather. Where we live in eastern Maine, along the coast, the normal winter thermometer goes below zero many times each year. Most of our plants left in the garden crumple up and rot after a hard frost. Other plants, after freezing, thaw out time after time. The first task of the would-be winter greenhouser is to find out which plants will and which will not stand hard freezing. We have been studying this matter for the last forty years and are glad to share our findings.

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