Friday, August 20, 2010

crops for the cold frame

I am thinking about what to grow in my cold frame this fall. I'd like to keep it active as long as I can. I found this advice from Johnny's website interesting:

"If you have a hoop house, you can grow many cool-weather crops for harvest right through December. The trick is to get your crops established before the day length drops below 10 hours; after that, plants won't grow much, but they will tolerate cold temperatures until you're ready to harvest them. Some of the vegetables you can plant in a hoop house in August or September include: Collards, Kale, Lettuce, Salad mixes, Spinach, Swiss chard, Beets, Carrots, Kohlrabi, Radishes, Turnips, Broccoli, Cabbage, and Cauliflower."

Today the day length in the Boston area is about 13.5 hours. But its falling by about 3 minutes a day. It falls below 10 hours on November 10th. So I still have time.

I will probably need to transplant greens into my frame in October. Right now its overflowing with cucumbers and melons. They are amazing. I picked another 5 or 6 cukes today.

1 comment:

Marian(LondonUK) said...

Hi Kathy. Where as some things have been poor our Cucumbers have been fantastic too. I have 1 being eaten and 5 in the fridge, can't eat them fast enough. Apparently they are good braised?? and I found a recipe for Cucumber cooked with peas and mint that is supposed to go well with fish and chicken. Have you cooked them?
Marian (LondonUK)