The fall hoop.

I am just realizing that I never wrote about the fall planting in the hoop,,shame on me!

We built our first hoop house this spring and in the summer grew tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelon, and herbs in it.

Here it is at the peak of the summer! The tomatoes were touching the ceiling and the whole thing looked like a mini jungle!



Hubby went over to Johnny Seeds where they have a great variety of veggie seeds recommended for hoops and greenhouses. He picked out a few things that are cold hardy and would thrive in the hoop into fall.
The varieties we went with are:

• Winter Density Bibb Lettuce
• Savoy Leaf Spinach
• Black Seeded Simpson Leaf Lettuce
• Napoli Carrot
• Early Wonder Tall Top Beet

The second week in September we cleared everything out of the hoop house and planted our fall crops. (We calculated that if we planted any later than that the plants would not have enough time to grow before it got too cold)

Now we catch up to now....

 November and we are still gardening! The beets and spinach seem to be slow. We've had to reseed them a couple times, they just weren't coming up well, we're not sure why. Everything else looks great! The lighter green is the leaf lettuce followed by the bib lettuce behind it. We even threw in some radish seeds that we had left from the summer garden. They grow so fast we've already harvested a bunch. Behind the bib lettuce is a row of spinach, followed by the carrots and the beets behind them. The carrots did well from the get go, germination was really good. Also my pot of parsley that's been sitting there since summer still looks good.

Two days ago we had an unexpected cold snap that sent temperatures down to 19 degrees over night. (Pretty cold for this time of year) Hubby purchased some row cloth just in time and we draped it over the plants the day before.
Now check this out....        

The day after that cold snap and we were harvesting for a salad! Fresh lettuce and radishes! The majority of the plants looked fine with only the larger beet plants showing some wilting on a few leaves.

With this success so far I'm realizing that I could be harvesting for a fresh salad for Thanksgiving and should not have to buy lettuce for most of the year. Pretty amazing!