Gardening

Homemade Garden Tunnels

If you’re a gardener you’ve most certainly heard of a garden tunnel to extend your growing season. They can protect your young plants from frost and insect invasion. Here’s a twist on how we made our own garden tunnels.

When Marc was a young boy growing up on his family farm in Kentucky, his Dad would cut small sections of fencing and formed circles around plants so he could train them as they grew. After getting back into gardening later in life, Marc wanted to do the same, but couldn’t find the right kind of fencing. He bought some remesh (concrete reinforment – looks similar to a fence). In trying to mimic his dad, he bent the remesh into a half circle but when the cage landed on the ground in tunnel fashion (as in the picture below) he thought he’d go with it.

Uses:

• Use them with row cover to extend your growing season.
• Create a small greenhouse by covering with a clear plastic.
• Use them as cages to help support your plants as they grow. 

This really works great with tomato plants. Once they are hardened off, I plant young seedlings in the ground and use a cage over the bed with row cover to protect them. I've used rocks, dirt, wood, and sand bags to hold the row cover down, but just recently have been using clothes pins to fasten the fabric to the cages. It seems to work pretty well. You can also put the cages end to end if you have long beds to create one long continuous tunnel. I keep the cages on throughout the entire growing season. When we’re all clear of frost for the season, I take off the row cover and just let the plants grow up through the cages. It also works well with any vining plant like squash or cucumbers. 

Making the Cages:

• It's a good idea to have two people - one to hold the remesh and the other to do the cutting.
• Use small bolt cutters to cut the remesh.
• Buy or salvage 5' remesh- it's cheaper if you buy it by the roll (you can purchase a 5' by 50' roll of remesh at Menards for around $50 - this will make 10 cages). 
• Cut the remesh in 5' sections, making sure your cut is made down the middle of the squares so that you have sharp ends to anchor your cage into the ground. (As shown in the picture on the right).
• Make sure the remesh is bent in a half circle so it will fit over your bed. These cages should fit over a 3' wide bed, but are adjustable, so that you have a little room to play.

We've found these cages have been quite sturdy for us, even in our extreme environment (high winds and heavy snow).  One thing to look out for is unsmooth edges on the remesh. This can cause the row cover to tear in high winds. We have had this happen and have used a file or angle grinder to smooth out any rough edges on the remesh. It seems to have helped. 

The garden is always evolving and we try to make improvements whenever possible, but we feel we've found the garden tunnel that works best for us. It's relatively inexpensive, sturdy, versatile and will last a long time.

Gardening in the Pine Ridge

There's something about gardening that feels so...natural. A garden is so peaceful yet so dynamic and packed with life. What other activities can bring to fruition an abundance of healthy, delicious food, fun exercise, and a chance to connect with the Earth?  

We live in a Zone 4 area that is quickly becoming a Zone 5. We're trying to be conscious about the changing weather and which variety of plants will best suit our environment in the coming years.

We roto-tilled our garden the very first year and have not tilled since (10 years). We put a lot of work into the garden that year, creating raised beds on our slightly sloping south-facing hill. We’ve found this has worked amazingly as a kind of terraced garden. In the winter, all the snow accumulates between the beds, keeping them moist. We designed the garden so that it had five sections with beds of semi-equal proportions, and the next year added one more section. We also have a portion of the garden set aside for herbs. We’ve found this is adequate for our needs. The sections were intended to help with crop rotation and move within the garden each year. They are listed in order of succession in the garden:

Section 1 - Squash, Melons and Cucumbers

• Includes Butternut, Buttercup, and Acorn Squash, Cantaloupe, and Pickling Cucumbers.
• Long growing season.
• High watering needs.
• Heavy feeders - likes plenty of compost.

Section 2 - Greens/Broccoli/Cabbage/Carrots/Parsnips/Celery

• Greens include Arugula, Kale, Chard, Mustard, Lettuce, Asian greens...the list is a long one.
• Short growing season - make succession plantings of greens and carrots or start a fall garden mid summer with turnips/radishes/beets, etc.
• Heavy watering needs.
• Moderate feeders - needs a good helping of compost.

Section 3 - Tomatoes/Sweet Peppers

• Long growing season.
• High watering needs.
• Heavy feeder - likes plenty of compost.
• Can inter plant companion plants such as carrots in between tomato plants.

Section 4 - Onions/Garlic/Shallots

• Plant in October - November.
• Low watering needs.
• Moderate feeders - needs a good helping of compost.
• Harvested in late July - early August.
• Plant a small Basil crop after harvesting - we've found it germinates and grows quickly at this time. 

Section 5 - Potatoes and Hot Peppers

• Direct plant Potatoes in March-April.
• Hot Peppers planted later in the season.  I usually have some quick growing green planted in this section until I'm ready to plant the hot pepper plants.
• Moderate watering needs.
• Plant beets/radishes or turnips after harvesting potatoes.

Section 6 - Cover Crop

• Grown in one "dormant" section each year and turned under to provide some nitrogen and organic matter.
• Short growing season.
• Low watering needs.
• We use the Summer Soil Builder Mix by Peaceful Valley of cow peas and buckwheat.

Section 7 - Herbs and More

• Variety of herbs grown including mints, yarrow, oregano, thyme, marjoram.
• Strawberries - we have had our strawberries growing in the same section for 5 years and last year made a new "home", dug up some plants and relocated to a new spot.
• Horseradish - last year was our first crop of horseradish and it did exceptionally well. I planted the roots in a small section of the garden where a compost pile had previously been. 
• Marshmallow - Planted for the first time last year - not sure it will grow well here.

We built our raised beds so they were 3 feet wide, and put down drip irrigation, setting it up so that each section could be watered separately, according to the needs of the plants. This works particularly good, since each section has different watering needs.

In the beginning we planted many different varieties of each crop and found which variety suited us and our environment the best. Take for example the squash. We have planted Acorns, Buttercups, Butternuts, and fancy flat-topped pan squash. While we really enjoy Butternuts, they just don’t seem to grow as prolifically for us as Buttercups. We’ve have volunteer Buttercup plants growing directly from our compost pile maturing into the most beautiful plant and loaded with squash. So it’s kind of a no-brainer that that is the squash we should focus on and I will begin saving the seeds next year. Our goal is to do this with each main vegetable in our garden…narrow our varieties down to the 2 best growers/producers and save seeds from those plants.