Season Extending: A New Skill For The New Year

Okay, we’ve established that I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning new things and improving on the old.

That’s why I’ve decided to jump on board with a collaboration/challenge issued by Abby Jo at Forgotten Way Farms.

Watch her video here.

Side Note: As you may have noticed I responded to Abby’s YouTube call-out with a video of my own.  Which means yesterday I created a YouTube Channel and my first-ever video.  I’d adore a like and follow if you do the Tube!  

A few weeks ago I ran across a video of a man who was heating his greenhouse with a pile of rotting leaves (compost). That led me down the rabbit trail, to find that there are tons of people doing this. Tons of people who are apparently much brighter than me.

Why have I not thought of this?! I’ve literally sat at my window looking out at my steaming compost pile mid-winter and wondered at the heat coming off it. But it never occurred to me to put that pile in the greenhouse to trap and use all those beautiful BTUs.

Suddenly I was very glad we never quite finished cleaning up the leaves this past fall, and at that point there wasn’t any snow to speak of. (We have some now, brrrr!)

The only problem was that our “greenhouse” was, at that point just a shell of metal tubing. The plastic cover that came with it when we bought it rotted away a couple of years ago, and I couldn’t remember who makes the greenhouse to order a replacement cover. I also wanted to do something that wouldn’t rot away, which would mean retrofitting the tubing so that it would be possible to attach polycarbonate panels and make a “real” greenhouse.  Which meant spending money.  Which meant I would research and research and ultimately do nothing.

Well, when we got a run of beautiful sunny weather I just couldn’t take it any more.  I remembered a roll of plastic we had lying around and pulled it out.  Turns out it was exactly the right size for the project.

I enclosed the greenhouse, and used my flat iron (a girl’s gotta have some good hairstyling tools!) to seal the seams.  (Cover the plates in parchment and don’t leave the iron in one place too long if you want to use your iron or flat-iron for sealing plastic.  It works really well! )

The plastic I used is only 3 mil and not treated to resist UV aging, so it won’t hold heat as well as real greenhouse film and it won’t last.  But it will last until we can take on the retrofit project later in the spring.

I raked up some leaves, tossed in some rabbit manure, and scooped in some sloppy soil from inside the chicken run.

This is a pile from scratch, and we’re getting freezing weather, so for the first couple weeks nothing happened.  I decided to make a batch of rabbit manure tea to give it a boost, and now, even though it’s a bunch colder outside, the pile is starting to warm up.

This is exciting!

I’ve just ordered my seeds, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that by the time they arrive, the greenhouse will be stable enough for starting my cold hardy greens.

I’m also thinking I’ll use the greenhouse into summer to try to get some watermelons and sweet potatoes which like the extra heat.  This isn’t really season extending, per-se, let’s call it season boosting.

After that I’ll attempt to keep some cold hearty veggies into winter.  I’m thinking a few cabbages, collards, salad mix and maybe a potted cherry tomato.

We’ll see how it goes.  At the very least I’ll learn something about what it takes to grow a winter garden in zone 6B.

So what about you?

Are you learning any new skills this year?

This post is linked up at the Homestead Blog Hop!