Market Farming

["William McKay" <bmckay55 AT hotmail.com>]

While not a 'market farmer', I have been trying coleman's winter harvest 
manual techniques for the past two winters with mixed success.  I have a 
little (12x16) unheated hoop house. Single layer of plastic, beds covered 
with remay cloth held up by hoops made of # 9 wire.

I live in southern New England, zone 5/6 and success in this is very much 
weather dependent.  Brief periods of very cold (below zero) weather do not 
appear to have much of an effect on crops; last year I transplanted lettuce 
in early February and the next night the temperature went down to -2. 
Everything froze like a popsicle and then bounced back. I had market size 
lettuce by early April which is some kind of trick in New England.  This 
year I had good lettuce & chard growth through December and early January 
and could harvest at least once and often twice a week.   Long periods of 
very cold weather (as we have had for the past month) pretty much stop all 
growth and will kill some crops (the Sierra Lettuce I had all died). If your 
climate is such that you have winter nights mostly in the twenties with an 
occasional colder period, your crops should thrive in these structures.  
Even in early January when there is not a lot of power in the sun's rays, it 
will get reasonably warm in one of these structures.  By now (mid February,) 
I really should vent during the day, even if the high temperature never gets 
above freezing)

I wrote to coleman and he told me that in his experience the lettuce that 
was most cold hardy was Dano & Tango, both from Johnny's.  I have been able 
to over winter rosemary very successfully and that might prove to be a nice 
niche crop for folks who supply restaurants. I have also had especially good 
luck with chard, especially the thin stemmed italian varieties.  Aamazingly, 
one of the few things still surviving this very cold winter is coriander 
(cilantro).

One of the real challenges with this is water.  One of the reasons Coleman 
is able to do better than I (our climates are similar) is that he keeps his 
soil moist.  He can do this because he has water pipes going into his 
greenhouse.  In the evening, water vapor freezes on the remay cloth & 
creates a fairly imprevious heat barrier.  I do not have water in my 
greenhouse and it gets a bit boring humping water down through the snow so 
mine stays a bit dry & I pay the price.
Bill McKay in E. Massachusetts
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