The Urban Farmer's Almanac

Its been a very mild (some would say non-existent) summer in the Northwest.  Add to this the fact that tomatoes are notoriously hard to grow here anyway and I am surprised we have anything to show from our tomato starts this year.  We had good luck last year growing our tomatoes in the hoop house.  This year, however, not much has grown out back, but we’ve had great luck with the cherry tomato plant in our front bed.  Who knows why it did so well.  We assumed it got a lot of radiant heat from the concrete stairs behind it, but what to we know?

Its great to be able to go outside grab a handful of tomatoes when a meal arrives.  I actually do not really like raw tomatoes (shudder, gasp – gardener treason!) but my kids love them.  Tonight for dinner I grabbed a cucumber, a handful of tomatoes and a bowl of blackberries (courtesy of our neighbor’s out of control bushes that are trailing over the fence) and had dinner.  Of course the protein of tonight’s dinner was frozen chicken nuggets, but no one’s perfect right?  Anyway it seems everyday there is another harvest of tomatoes to serve up and we may have permanently found a new place for our heat loving plants.

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We’ve been talking about our plans for a hoop house ever since we visited our friend Yuka’s parents’ garden last summer and saw their prospering tomatoes in a makeshift greenhouse. We decided on the back bed to keep the somewhat unsightly contraption out of the view from the street. The construction was pretty simple — just 1/2″ and 3/4″ PVC pipe, some hardware to hold it to the garden bed, and some 6 mil plastic.

You’ll see from one of the photos below how we have the bed set up. We laid a soaker hose on top of the bed, then rolled on black plastic sheeting. Lastly we cut holes through the plastic to plant our starters in. The goal is to minimize weeds and also to retain moisture and keep evaporation to a minimum. We’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

It’s also designed to be easy to get at the plants, so the walls fold up 8 feet at a time to make tending and harvesting a little more convenient. We’re putting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant back there, and there’s room for one or two more things if something fancy comes along.

The other benefit of this whole setup is that it will keep the chickens out of the back garden bed, which they have really been loving of late, since it’s full of worms.

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