Try Quick Hoops: Easy-to-Make Mini-Greenhouses

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Gardeners at the authors' Four Season Farm in Maine spread row covers over hoops to protect winter crops.
Gardeners at the authors' Four Season Farm in Maine spread row covers over hoops to protect winter crops.
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Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman are organic gardening pioneers whose Four Season Farm in Maine produces year-round vegetable crops. In their new book 
Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman are organic gardening pioneers whose Four Season Farm in Maine produces year-round vegetable crops. In their new book "The Four Season Farm Gardener's Cookbook," Barbara and Eliot guide readers through growing, cooking and eating their own food.
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Heavy-duty quick hoops are shaped using a bending form bolted to a picnic table.
Heavy-duty quick hoops are shaped using a bending form bolted to a picnic table.
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Quick hoops protect plants from freezing cold and snow.
Quick hoops protect plants from freezing cold and snow.
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Sandbags prevent covers from blowing away.
Sandbags prevent covers from blowing away.

Eating doesn’t get any more local than your own backyard. Learn how to grow what you eat and cook what you grow with the help of The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook (Workman Publishing Company, 2013) by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman.The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook is two books in one. It’s a complete four-season cookbook with 120 recipes from Barbara who shows how to maximize the fruits — and vegetables — resulting from your labors. And it’s a step-by-step garden guide that works no matter how big or small your plot, with easy-to-follow instructions and plans for different gardens. In this excerpt, learn how to extend the growing season through the winter months by building mini-greenhouses.

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook

Gardeners through the ages have tried to extend summer. A sheltered area in a winter vegetable garden used to protect plants from cold and wind can often take plants past their normal season. Even the south side of a board fence or a thick hedge, blocking the cold north winds, will provide a slightly more benign climate. Old-time gardeners took advantage of these warm, sheltered spots to keep the fresh harvest going as long as they could in their winter gardens.

Quick Hoops 

Harvesting winter fare is so satisfying that, after you try it, you’ll probably want to extend your repertoire. But adding more cold frames to winter gardens means more time and money spent acquiring them. That’s why we came up with simpler, lighter, and less expensive structures we call quick hoops. They’re just sheets of clear plastic or row cover material supported by 10-foot lengths of pipe, bent into half circles and poked into the ground. Quick hoops look like 3-foot-tall mini-greenhouses.

  • Published on Mar 12, 2013
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