The winter harvest handbook

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Contents

Introduction 1. The Winter Harvest 2. Historical Inspiration 3. Getting Started 4. The Yearly Schedule 5. Sunlight 6. The “Cold” Greenhouse 7. The “Cool” Greenhouse 8. Winter Crops 9. Summer Crops 10. Greenhouse Design 11. Year-Round Intensive Cropping 12. Soil Preparation 13. Sowing 14. Weed Control 15. Harvesting in Winter 16. Marketing and Economics 17. Pests 18. Insects and Diseases 19. Tools for the Small Farm 20. Deep-Organic Farming and the Small Farm Appendices Annotated Bibliography Index

xi 1 13 25 33 41 55 67 75 93 105 123 131 141 151 157 165 175 179 187 195 215 235 239

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The “Cool� Greenhouse

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Beds are continually replanted in a winter greenhouse.

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Greenhouse Design

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with diagonal braces at each corner of the house. We retained the crossbar on each hoop because we think it is necessary in a mobile house to keep the hoops from splaying when the house is moved. Also, the crossbars provide overhead structure so trellised crops such as tomatoes or cucumbers can be grown in the houses during the summer.

Making Greenhouses Move I discussed a number of different options for making greenhouses mobile in The New Organic Grower, including a ballcaster design and various skid designs. We have used all of them at one time or another. With A 48-by-22-foot house on 2-by-3-inch galvanizedour rocky soil it was extremely difficult to drive pipe skids.

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The Winter Harvest Handbook

The broadfork is used to aerate the soil between succession crops.

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The Winter Harvest Handbook

Different tools, requiring different hand positions.

The result is wrist strain with the conventional trowel but not with the modified bricklayer’s trowel.

a 90-degree angle to the handle, there were a few with smaller blades at an 80-degree angle, and they were somewhat more pleasant to use. Off to the workbench we went with a couple of sacrificial hoes and proceeded to cut, bend, and file. After repeated trips back to the fields to try them out we came up with a prototype with a narrow blade (7 inches side to side and 1 inch front to back) and with the neck bent to hold the cutting edge of the blade in line with the handle at a 75-degree angle.

After further experimentation with many eager participants we determined that the optimum angle was 70 degrees. We also

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