Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

I built my own 4 season cold greenhouses.

I have (10) 30 foot long 4 foot and 6 ft wide beds.

I visited Coleman's incredible farm some years back when he was still giving tours. He has some pricey movable greenhouses. But he also uses some hoop houses with plastic coverings.

I use hoop benders to make my own hoophouses, which cover my beds.

2 of my greenhouses are 32 feet long and 10 feet wide.

These cover my 6 foot wide beds.

I place 55 gallon drums painted black, so they absorb energy from the sun easier, on their sides down the entire side inside the greenhouse. These are 3/4 filled with water. They collect energy during the day and give this off at night when it is cooler.

I walk down the middle of the bed on a foot wide path, which is all I need for this cold house.

So I have (2) 30 inch wide beds under this one 32 foot long greenhouse/hoophouse with plenty of room on the sides for water barrells to collect energy. I walk down the middle...OK so these are Mittleider beds in every way...they are just carrying some extra equipment to keep them warm....this is why I have some 6 foot wide beds in the summer, which are really 2 30 inch wide beds with a walk area in the middle.....these work better than any other bed size I ahveresearched with...

In the cold weather I cover with a hail resistant polyethylene plastic sheeting.

I went to the feed store and purchased cheap heavy duty straight livestock fencing wire and made little frames to stick in the ground across my beds.

I drape agribond or any heavy duty covering (Ihave some I have used for 4 years straight now) over the plants when it is really cold...usually at night.....this picture is from Elliots manufacturing greenhouse...if you do it just like this you will not be sorry...

What you are doing is to protect your food store in a fairly dormant state during the cold months. You will need to start growing earlier in the Fall as cold weather slows growth considerably.

Elliot is in a zone 4.5/5 I think as I recall... I am in a 5B, which is not quite as cold...gets down to -15--25 in the Winter.....

I use no other energy other than the passive solar energy set up.

I made my 10 foot wide complete with everything for about 400.00 a piece.

I have delicious greens all winter long, carrots, potatoes, turnips, onions and much more from the outside greenhouses.

I have been using indoor grow racks for sometime now....would not be without them.....but these will need energy unless you have them in an indoor atrium set up as you need light...

I have 5 tiers and they are ceiling high, 4 foot 4 inches wide and 2 feet 4 inches deep.

Each of these has 2 sets of 4 foot shop lights,,,OK....

I bought a 4 foot by 24 inch long heat mat....most of them are 22 inches wide...mine is a specailty matt.

I put 4 full size garden trays with slits inside a tray without slits (for drainage, a really great investment at many garden stores and also thrown away quite often by others)

Then I use promix BX (I put one bag in an open top 55 gallon drum to use throughout the winter) or any of several soil blocking mixes, along with Mittleider home produced fertilizers (the only fertilizer I would ever use)....I make my own seed plugs all on one shelf. These seed plugs are all germinated on one rack and I plant every kind of seed this way...none of them fail....ever...

Then I plug thse inside larger blocks on the next 2 racks up and finally these are transplanted into either winter time grow boxes or into larger soil blocks or straight into garden beds outside.

What this does is allow you to totally control the environment for germination and early growth. This is pesticide free, constant warmth, and constant moisture levels in controlled soil settings. These young plants are picture perfectly healthy and strong. They only need hardening to go out or to be given a little extra room and they grow very well.

I do plastic or mylar sheet in my indoor grow racks. I bought a large quantity of mylar sheet rolls in Cranberry PA for very very cheap. THis helps to keep heat inside your grow rack system, especially useful if you keep your indoor temps low in th3 winter months...I like 50 degrees F in the winter time. My indoor plants need more though. so by having a heatr mat which pulls very little energy, and having the sides tented in....it is nice and warm and sunny in there for them.

I grow vine vegetables indoors such as tomatoes by making a tall closet shaped rack using the same materials I make my horizontal grow rackjs withy. so it kind of looks like a closet frame. I hang the very same grow lights vertically from the middle of this frame and place the tomaTO PLANTS AROUND THE OUTSIDE OF THE LIGHTS. i USE 3 SHOP LIGHTS WHICH ARE 6 4 FOOT LONG FULL SPECTRUM TUBES AND PLACE THESE BACK TO BACK INA TRIANGLE DOWN THE MIDDLE. SO THE TOMATOES, CUCUMBERS SQUASH ETC CAN GROW IN A CIRCLE AROUND THESE LONJG LIGHTS.

I have used several tube light spectrums with the tomaotoes and to be honest, as long as they have those good full spectrum lights on about 16 hours a day, they set fruit easily by me tapping the bar where they are tetherd, the vibration causes pollination to be able to happen or take sterile Q tips and pollinate them your self....I havent grown larger market tomatoes indoors becasue of room...like Glamour or big Beefsteak...but last winter I was able to get a good 3/4 bushels of tomatoes from one tomaote plant on average from both a Rutgers sauce tomatoe and one of the Campbell tomatoes.....

I cannot describe to you how wonderfulk it is to have a blustery snowstorm outside where everything is shut down and be able to go outside and harvest fresh oproduce and then inside have every herb and melons, tomatoes etc. available....last winter I grew a watermelon inside of a square lucite cube with a hinged top....It of course grew square and I had amazing watermelon indoors in February.....

As this represents a higher energy cost on your fuel bill...you may need to cut down on other appliances etc...

Here is how I do it....I cut out Sattelite TV...I do not miss it.....we use the computer for streaming etc...
Then I cut our garbage pickup and am taking care of my own...we don not miss it.....

Some of ur indoor grow racks are in our large formal :) dining room. The lighting provideds light for us so we do not need to turn on any other lighting.

I di not use an electric grain/bean mill in the winter...I use a hand mill....

Our energy costs are no higher and even less now.

Let me tell you what I am having tonight for supper from my garden.

It is cold and raining and windy right now....so I made a hearty whole grain pizza (I rolled cheese up into the crust) with fresh garden tomatoes, fresh basil, minced fresh garlic, lots of olive oil dribbled here...wheat gluten and bean sausage, fresh homemade mozzarella cheese, arugula, cucumber, greenonion with crouton salad with a vinegrette using homemade vinegar (yup I figured out Balsamic about 15 years ago and some of that first I am using now...If I can do it anyone can), olive oil (the only thing I have not produced is olive oil here...but I do manufacture flax, grape seed oils myself), raspberries from the garden, sea salt, cayenne, rosemary that is fresh....and we are having fresh peach shortcake for desert tongiht....I have guests coming for supper, am working nights this week...and put everything together in about 35 minutes....

I can tell you that these poeple will ooh and ahhh at the pizza and everything else becasue they are so accustomed to pasty crap pizza etc...and this will pop their eyes out....it is always the same with this....when it is fresh and from scratch like this there is no comparison....
.....on top of this, they will be eating on Leslie Lindslee style decoupaged glass plates...all pictures from my garden...costing me about 6 dollars total for 8 place setting as I found these at a garage sale.....

These people are from our County GOV. They are coming to visit to learn some ideas on how to help others who are now living in poverty, have a better life by gardening and learning to do some things for themselves that they never thought was possible.

These gardens take time to develope and if you do not get them started you will not have the time to joy in what they provide.

Oh, did I tell you I shop outside of my own pantry about twice a year? Think of the gas savings that is????????

I hope someone feels inspired to get started and enjoy the triple AAA cusine...
Kathleen O'Meal

----- Original Message -----
From: Mrs. Tips
To: MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2011 3:25 AM
Subject: [MittleiderMethodGardening] Re: Counsel from someone who's really serious about self-sufficiency

Leah,
Elliott Coleman talks about greenhouses (and every other conceivable winter garden outbuilding) you can build for well under 10K. I am very tempted to build a small greenhouse in my side yard for my winter garden if only to protect lettuce and spinach from frosting over during our cold winters in Utah county.
Yvonne

--- In MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com, K BOWTHORPE <bowthorpe1@...> wrote:
>
>
> Wow, I don't usually respond very often but this is amazing, can you show a picture of your greenhouse with an apple tree? How expensive was your greenhouse? I have a co-worker whose greenhouse was 10,000 dollars and it couldn't house fruit trees because it is small. I would love to try to build one or something in order to have fruit trees, what kind of weather do you have were you are? I would love to learn how to do some of the things you are talking about, how do you grow your greens indoors? and what is a grow rack? Please also explain amaranth? Where can you buy this? Or did you grow that too? Are you a stay at home mom? I feel I don't have that much time to do all of what your doing, but I sure would like to learn how to, and if I cut some hours from my schedule maybe I can start.
> Leah B

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