Winter hoophouse posts in Mother Earth News newsletter

Sowing and Transplanting Winter Crops in a Hoophouse

Grow Great Lettuce in Winter

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Would you live in a hoophouse?

A reader wrote in:

“I have actually been thinking of building a tiny house and putting it inside a big hoophouse, creating a living area that would include a yard, trees, and gardens – allowing me to snowbird in place in northern New England – but I’m concerned about outgassing, since I’d be there almost 24-7 most days (I work out of my home). Have you done any research on outgassing of hoophouses?”

A Tiny House is generally a residential structure under 400 sq. ft

First off, No I haven’t done any research about hoophouse off-gassing, but I wouldn’t worry about out-gassing from the polyethylene of the hoophouse. Other products  are much closer to your nose: All the materials used to construct, preserve and decorate the house and all the products within the house, such as furniture,  fabrics, soaps, appliances etc.

There are some other things I’d wonder about:

1.      Temperature. When the sun shines, the interior of the hoophouse warms up. When the sun doesn’t shine, it doesn’t. Would you heat the tiny house? You’d have to avoid heating systems that could damage the plants.

2.      Snowfall. When it snows, you need to remove the snow from the roof of the hoophouse. Some snow can be carefully pulled down from the outside. Usually we also walk around inside the hoophouse bouncing a broom on the inside of the plastic to move the snow off. You can’t do that if you have a house in the way.

3.      Humidity. In the winter we grow cold-tolerant hoophouse crops. We are aiming for 65 F (18C). We need fresh air for the plants and to deter fungal diseases. It doesn’t work to keep the hoophouse sealed up and “cozy”!

4.      Strong winds. In hurricanes and gales, hoophouses sometimes collapse or get destroyed. You don’t want to be inside when that happens.

5.      Height. Our hoophouse is less than 14 ft (4 m) at the apex.

Do you value crop rotation in your hoophouse?

A reader in the Pacific Northwest wrote: “This winter I have been re-thinking my crop rotation plan after having some issues (with flea beetle larvae in the soil outsmarting my diligent insect netting of my brassica salad crops). These days I see intensive market gardeners seeming to not worry so much about rotation (i.e. Neversink farm, etc), and yet I’ve always been taught that it is such an important principle to follow. I reviewed your slideshows on crop rotation and also cool crop planning in the greenhouse (which briefly addresses salad brassica rotation with other crops). With how much space I have and the high demand I have for brassicas, for salad mix (mustards) and also the more mainstay cole crops, I had settled on a 2.5 yr between brassica crop rotation (but planting two successions of mustards in the same bed within one year, in the year the bed was in mustards, with a lettuce or other crop breaking up the successions, with the idea that they were very short day and also light feeder crops). Wondering if you think this just doesn’t sound cautious enough, or if this sounds like a reasonable compromise with not having more space to work with (and wanting to satisfy the market demand for brassicas).”

I replied: “Yes, I do think crop rotation is important. I do know some farms seem to have given it up. I think what you are seeing shows one reason why rotation is important. In our hoophouse, we do as you do, allocating brassicas to a space for that winter season and perhaps doing more than one round of brassica crops. Then moving away from brassicas for the next two winters. If doing that doesn’t get rid of the flea beetle problem, and you are being thorough about netting with small-enough mesh netting (sounds like you are, but maybe check the mesh size), then my next step would be spinosad when the flea beetles appear. You can spray the inside of the netting too, and close it quickly. It’s that or a longer rotation, which it sounds like is not financially viable. You could also try farmscaping and/or importing predatory insects (not sure if there are any), Are there beneficial nematodes that attack flea beetle larvae? These are things I don’t know about, but might be worth looking into.”

Sweet Potato fends off bugs

Modern Farmer has this fascinating article about sweet potato plants alerting their neighbors to pest attacks.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute and the National Taiwan University found that when sweet potato plants are attacked by insects, they emit a bouquet of odors and start production of a protein called sporamin that makes them unappetizing. Neighboring sweet potatoes sense the odors and start their own production of sporamin.

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Insect damage cause stress-response production of anti-oxidants

In a related piece of news, Agrilife Today from Texas A&M AgriLife Research has found some evidence that wounded plants produce anti-oxidants as a stress response, which may make them healthier for human consumption. Read the report here.

Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist Spring Series

Michael Judd in cooperation with Common Market CO+OP is presenting a combination of hands-on workshops at Long Creek Homestead and evening talks at the Common Market, Frederick Maryland.

Click here for info on Spring Workshops/Talks/Tours

·        Inoculating Mushrooms

·        Fruit Tree Grafting

·        Herb Spirals

·        Creating Growing Beds- Swales and Hugelkultur

·        Edible Landscaping & Straw Bale Home Tour

·  For the Love of PawPaws

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Fire Ants have reached Toronto

A reader wrote in that the European Fire Ant is now found in Toronto.

“There were two nests of these in my allotment garden 2018.
They actually moved the nest in order to be closer to the zucchini
plants.  Hand on heart: I never had  any cucumber beetles develop past
the instar stage.  The ants did not eat the eggs but they ate the larvae
as soon as they hatched.  Same for potato beetle.  My neighbours had
the best cucumber harvest in history. What I’ve read is these Fire Ants kill colonies of native ants.  Summer 2019 I had a Pavement Ant war that went on for days.  Clearly the Fire Ants did not wipe them out.  There are black ants and other smaller red ants
in my garden.  The Fire Ants appear to have moved on for some reason known
only to themselves.   Perhaps they too have enemies.”“There’s a guy with a Youtube channel who keeps ant colonies.   AntsCanada although he is in the Philippines.  What happened was the feral Pharaoh Ants invaded his colony of Fire ants and killed them.  Pharaoh Ants are much smaller but perhaps that’s what gave them the advantage.   We have Pharaoh ants in Toronto also.   I spend a lot of my time looking at the little critters in my garden.  Like red velvet mites:  there were many in 2016.  Have not seen a single one in two years now. “