Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Here are photos of Eliot Coleman's place in Maine, with greenhouses. Note the 
plants.
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2719

His book Four-Seasons Harvest is at 
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Season-Harvest-Organic-Vegetables-Garden/dp/1890132276

The one idea that stuck with me was layering. Like extra layers of clothing 
you can add or take off. Inside an unheated greenhouse he adds row cover over 
beds of greens for the coldest winter months. They stop growing in low winter 
light but under row cover stay good for market & restaurants, and are 
harvested continually till time to replant in spring. It saves heating 
expense, and cost cutting is the name of the game.

I used that idea last spring when transplanting our own gallon tomato 
seedlings into our greenhouse beds. Just deep cardboard boxes over the 
tomatoes at night, removed in the daylight as it warmed up. I was able to 
transplant them into the unheated greenhouse weeks earlier. Last frost in May.

In one book Coleman explains he stopped digging and tilling. Apparently in 
that one photo he's just working some compost into the top inch or two. He 
doesn't grow completely in permanent beds but I do.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/9/2008 at 9:26 AM Harvey Ussery wrote:

>>
>> She and her husband bought a green house from a nursery that went out of
>business and are in the process of setting it up.  It is the frame, hoops
>and roll plastic type.
>>
>> They live in a reasonably mild climate area of south central Montana,
>but Montana non the less.
>>
>> The question is: Which vegetables are happiest in the green house and
>which are happier out side?
>>
>> Thanks from them and us.  Dean
>
>Experiment! As long as your friends are planting *cold hardy*
>vegetables, they should try a wide variety and see what works for them.
>Some, such as spinach, are extremely cold hardy--some, such as lettuce,
>are less so, but will still produce salads longer than they would
>exposed outside, before succumbing to the increasing cold. Cooking
>greens like chard and kale will vary.
>
>Chicories are more cold hardy than lettuces and make fabulous
>deep-winter salads (here in Zone 6b).
>
>Check out more obscure options that are very cold hardy: minutina
>(stella herba--or is it herba stella), claytonia or miner's lettuce, mache.
>
>And if you have leftover cloves of garlic when you plant your fall
>garlic--or stored onions that are still firm but starting to
>sprout--plant them here and there in the greenhouse, and harvest the
>green tops. Good in stirfries, soups, salads.
>
>~Harvey
>
>--
>Harvey in northern Va
>www.themodernhomestead.us
>
>I truly believe that as long as we have not found peace with the soil, we
>won't find peace above the ground. That as long as we justify the
>exploitation of any organism, other exploitations will follow and we will
>remain parasites, consuming more than participating, and spiralling into
>entropy until we commit mass suicide.  ~Emilia Hazelip
>
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