Monday, January 5, 2009

Row Covers


It's been so cold at night and tho I said we weren't going to bother with row covers this year....we did. The lettuce bed that used to be our front yard just seemed the best (ok, easiest) one to start with and we had some rebar lying around.


Steve cut the stakes about 30 inches long, bent them slightly, pushed them into the ground alongside the box and slid the PVC down over the stakes. The nice thing about the system is it's movable and will store easily over the summer.


We also had some black plastic in the shed and used rocks to hold it in place.


We've been putting the covers on at dusk every night ...


...and taking them off first thing in the morning. We'll probably do this till March or so, depending on the weather. The lettuce has been pretty stunted since it got cold, we're hoping this will help.

Next week....we're doing one of the broccoli beds in the back yard :)

2 comments:

Julie said...

I think the lettuce looks good and green. How big is it supposed to get??

Maureen said...

It's actually very nice looking, just hasn't grown much in the past few weeks. It should be about twice the height it is now at maturity...tho we eat it all along the way. You can't tell from the pics but it's getting sparcer by the day...I hate to keep thinning the greens when they aren't really growing. The more space there is between the individual plants the more likely the cats will get in there and try to dig :)