BRRR it’s Cold!

The last 2 days have been pretty cold here in NE Ohio. Last night the temperature was down in the 20’s again, they were calling for snow on Friday but we missed it. My lettuce is doing just fine in the cold frame, it stays just warm enough for it.

I didn’t work out in the garden, I stayed inside and started all of my tomato seeds and a few peppers (it takes a long time to seed 24 different kinds of tomatoes). I also was able to spend a lot of time in the office catching up on work I had put off earlier in the week while working outside.

This time of year in Ohio you never know what kind of weather you’re going to get. We have a saying here, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”. It can be 70 one day and snowing the next. This poses quite a challenge for gardening. It’s not rare to have snow in April, which isn’t good for my little plants. That’s one reason we put hoop houses up over our raised beds; this should help greatly with this challenge.

On the bright side it’s going to be nice today and tomorrow, so I’ll be spending my days in the garden again.

I’ve really enjoyed the compost discussions the past couple days. We’ll definitely be revisiting that topic here pretty soon. I think there’s a lot more knowledge for all of you to share on that topic.

Anyone else experiencing more cold weather? Any snow?

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It’s Time

On Thursday I popped open the lid on my cold frame to check the temperature, this is what I saw.

An hour after I took this photo it was up to 75; this is just what I want to see on a 50 degree day. This means it’s time to plant my beet seeds and my lettuce seedlings in the cold frame, looks like I’ll be busy on the next warm dry day. This is all very exciting because I got my cold frame finished last fall a little too late to be of any use for my carrots. I’m interested to see how well it works for extending the season this spring and fall.

Mr Chiot’s and I attended a bee keeping seminar yesterday. We had a great time and learned a lot, I’ll be posting all about our adventures in learning about bees tomorrow.

Have you been able to do any garden chores in the garden this weekend? Are you already planting things?

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New In the Garden: Hoop Houses

For all of you who guessed a hoop house you’re right. Well, kind of, we added hoops to our raised beds (so not a proper hoop house, but 5 mini hoop houses).


We added these to help extend the growing season. I don’t have room to add a big walk-in greenhouse like Eliot Coleman in Four-Season Harvestso I decided to go this route. Since my spinach did so well under a floating row cover, I thought doing hoop houses in addition to the floating row covers should allow me to extend the season throughout most of the winter.

I’m planning on covering these with plastic here in the next couple days and this should help warm the soil so I can plant things even earlier. They should also help protect early tomatoes from frost. In the summer I plan on adding netting to these to keep the deer and rabbits out of my crops, so they will be very handy in all seasons!

How much did they cost? The tubing was $2.19 each and we used 4 per raised bed (our beds are 4×10). With the tubing and the clamps to attach them it cost about $10-$12 per raised bed, not bad if you ask me!

Do you do anything to extend the season? Anyone else using hoop houses or hoping to?

For details instructions on how we built our hoop houses see this post.

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It’s Coming, Spring That Is

We had a beautiful day yesterday, it was sunny and in the mid 40’s. I decided to walk around the gardens to see if there were any signs of spring. It’s still winter here and it will be for several weeks (March 21 is the first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere). Most of the garden is still looking like winter, the raised beds are still protected with their mulch and a small blanket of snow.

Brown is still the dominant color in the garden and dried seed heads still take of the place of the summer flowers.

The raspberry canes are still showing their purple hue with not a leaf or berry in sight.

The blueberries are still hidden behind their fortress of chicken wire to protect them from the nibbling deer.

There are signs of life in the gardens though, the sedum out front is touting it’s early spring glow.

The larkspur seedling are ready to grow rapidly once they have a few warm days.

The foxgloves are waiting to send forth their tall spires of flowers as soon as the ground warms a little more.

Best of all, the chives are bursting forth ready to add flavor to all kinds of spring dishes.

I’m really excited for spring this year. I’m looking forward to working outside and I’m most excited about eating fresh green things from the garden (I did harvest more spinach on Tues, 4.1 oz).

Are there any signs of life in your winter gardens? What are you most excited about come spring?

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Things I Miss About Summer: Blue Skies

One of the things I start missing about summer this time of year, is the deep blue sky. We don’t get a lot of sunny days here in Northeastern Ohio during the winter months. We do get a sunny day occasionally, but the sky just isn’t this blue, it’s kind of gray.

Since I was missing the blue skies, I looked through all of my photos from the summer and thought I’d share some blue skies to brighten everyone’s day. Enjoy!






I miss working in the gardens with the warm sun on my back. Soon enough it will be that time again, and I’ll make sure to take notice of the deep blue skies!

What do you miss about summer this time of year?

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