OUR SUN-HEATED GREENHOUSE

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ALL WILL NOT SURVIVE

It is obvious that all vegetables will not survive a winter in our sunheated greenhouse. We selected hardy plants and treated them as well as we could, and we learned a great deal during these experiments. We found out that a homesteading family using a sun-heated greenhouse as its medium can supply itself on a twelve-month basis with salad and other greens taken directly from the garden and greenhouse. If our contention is upheld by subsequent tests, New Englanders and other cold climate homesteaders have a means of greatly improving their winter diets without dependence on artificial heating or on products imported from Florida, Texas, California, or Cuba.

PARSLEY HAS A GOOD CHANCE

Meanwhile we are continuing our experiments with a greater variety of plants because we would like to have at least a dozen greens that will survive the Maine winter in a sun-heated greenhouse. Our guess is that much depends upon the water content of succulent leaf stems, also on the moisture content of the soil in which the plants are growing.

We know that a parsley leaf with a juicy stem will freeze, that the cells will burst, and that with the first warm weather the stem will begin to rot. But please note the difference between the stem and the leaf webbing. The leaf web may go on living for days and weeks despite the loss of the leaf stem support. This fact leads us to conclude that certain varieties of parsley, lettuce, and other plants- carefully selected for the relative dryness of the leaf stems-will survive, particularly if watering is reduced to a minimum.

A BETTER LIFE

Through the ages human beings have been searching for a good life ... a better life. The current movement to homestead, to live simply and quietly, in good health, in clean air, and in the country is part and parcel of that long-term trend. It is not only a movement for individual betterment; it implies social change and improvement as well.

From Buildiong and Using Our- Heated Greenhouse by Helen and Scott Nearing , copyright© 1977 by Garden Way Publishing, Charlotte, Vt., and reprinted here by permission. This book is available in hard cover ($9.95) and paperback ($6.95) from any good bookstore and (in paperback only) from Mother Mother's Bookshelf.

As the determination to live a better life spreads through the North Temperate Zone, it is being transformed from a wish or dream stage into concrete social patterns. Providing fresh green food in a sunheated greenhouse is but one example of this advance. A large degree of self-sufficiency lies within the easy reach of any homesteaders who have established themselves and who are ready to put time, energy, and ingenuity into stabilizing their homestead way of life.

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