The Modern Victory Garden

We have been enjoying a rather balmy spring so far, but the weather forecast for the next several days is for a sudden shift to much colder weather.   This is a typical early spring condition - with abrupt changes in weather that can catch the inattentive gardener by surprise.   To extend the spring season successfully, you have to watch the forecasts and take action as needed to protect young plants from dramatic dips in temperature.        

All of the plants in the greenhouse are cold hardy and protected adequately by the greenhouse envelope with the exception of the super early tomatoes (Siletz) that I have recently moved out to the greenhouse.   I have been transporting them indoors at night and taking them back out to the greenhouse in the early morning, so they will be fine with the forecasted weather change.   The super early tomatoes are really growing well and seem to be happy with the extra attention and handling they are getting.   They are on the right in the first picture below.   Next to them is the sugar snap peas (Cascadia) and lettuces (Super Gourmet Blend) that I seeded yesterday – covered with a humidity dome.   The tray to the far left has the broccoli, swiss chard, and celery starts.   These tomatoes were started January 22nd and are being given extra care and protection so that they will (hopefully) produce a very early crop of tomatoes for me.   They will ultimately be planted in my 4 large black containers and will reside in the greenhouse until the weather really warms up and then move outside to continue growing.

For comparison, the majority of my tomato plants were started three weeks later on February 13th and they look like this right now.                   

Today I transplanted kale (Siberian Improved), pac choi (Ching Chiang), and cabbages (Savoy Ace and Tronchuda) into the garden.   They took up one 4 foot by 4 foot section in the garden bed.   They don’t look like much right now, but they will not take long to get established.                                 

Because we have some cold weather forecasted, it was important to get a grow tunnel cover erected over this newly planted bed.   I actually covered another 8 feet of bed in addition because I intend to plant the broccoli there in about two weeks and want the soil warmed up ahead of time for that.   

The last thing I needed to do today in preparation for the coming cold, was to cover the onion starts I planted out yesterday.   They are in a bed that does not work well for the grow tunnel covers, so I improvised using some of my tall tomato ladders, a panel of stiff wire grid (part of my compost bin sides), a few spring clamps, and plastic sheeting.                                         

I will leave these in place until the weather warms back up and is forecasted to stay that way for the foreseeable future.   Those of you who follow my blog regularly are used to seeing me use these tomato towers frequently for many purposes beyond their intended role as a support for tomatoes.   I find them quite useful to have around!

I think everything is buttoned up for the cold front that is moving in and hopefully the warm weather will return shortly thereafter.