My urban hoop house experiment station includes planting greens directly in the ground — but I also grow greens in pots. Potted greens so mobile and I can rotate them easily.
Indoor Shelving Unit
I keep pots on a shelf in my hoop house until a deep freeze sets in. Then, I put them under grow lights in the basement, where I put them on the shelves of a metal baker’s rack where I start my seeds during spring. Each shelf has a grow light hanging over it. Sometimes I rotate a pot or two to the dining room or the kitchen for easy harvesting or snacking. Then, the pot goes back under the grow lights, and I send some others upstairs.
This intensive vertical growing unit is my hoop house salad bar!
Right now, the greens in pots are lush and giving generously. I head for the harvest with a basket over my arm and scissors in hand. I tend to choose cut-and-come-again crops as a sustained form of harvesting that allows the plants to keep growing and gives us something to keep eating.
Planning a Hoop House
I originally started with pots in late summer when the hoop house bed was full and I wanted to start some seedlings for winter and early spring harvest. So I planted my winter greens in pots and let the tomatoes and tetragonia continue growing in the hoop house bed into the early fall. After I cleared space for winter seedlings in the bed, the pots still had greens that didn’t fit. (It takes no time at all for a hoop house to feel too small. That’s why a good rule is to make a plan to build one hoop house and then double its size.)
I kept the pots with extra seedlings and they have added to our harvest all fall. This is a nice little windfall during these short days when the hoop house greens grow so little.
Harvesting from a Hoop House
On Sunday mornings when we want a breakfast omelet with ribbons of kale and chives, I head for the hoop house salad bar and clip, clip, clip! It also assures lettuce for our sandwiches and arugula for a salad or a homemade pizza. I slip downstairs, through the basement and back up the stairs with tatsoi, beet greens or Chinese mustard for a salad, an omelet, a soup or a sandwich. (And sometimes the greens don’t even make it upstairs!)
What I haven’t done yet is to make up a lazy Susan with my potted greens, put it on the table and issue scissors to everyone at the table. Wouldn’t that make a great holiday treat?
