The Small Greenhouse Place

What’s in your hoophouse or polytunnel this winter?

Here’s what’s in mine (I’m on the Canadian southwest coast, USDA zone 7-8, temperate maritime climate):

Self seeded corn salad (mache). Last spring’s uneaten corn salad flowered so I waited to collect the seed – but waited a little too long so a lot of it fell before I grabbed it. For a long time it didn’t germinate and I wondered if it was no good, but come the cooler temperatures this fall it germinated like mad, so that section of the southern bed is a solid mass of corn salad.

Last spring and summer the center bed, under the trellis, contained strawberries, but they didn’t like the heat and even less being buried in bean vines. So I moved them to the northern side bed, where they will be cooler in the summer (that side rolls up) and have more space. Up to a week or so ago they were still determinedly setting flowers, but they seem to have given up now.

Along with the strawberries in the N bed I moved a load of clumps of corn salad, all of which are happy and perky. Luckily we like corn salad! Lettuce seed has been sprinkled around, too, to germinate when it feels ready during warmer spells, and grow on in the spring. There would be spinach seed too except I’ve run out.

Peas (bush shelling peas) will go in the south side bed in the next few weeks, again to germinate when they feel like it and give us an early crop next spring.

The center bed is empty now, waiting for compost and a good digging over to fill the holes where I took out the strawberries with plenty of roots, and to wait for tomatoes next April.