Unheated Winter Greenhouse in Maine

choi

(1) Ann Raver, The Land That Keeps Giving. New York Times, Feb 23, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/2 ... even-in-winter.html

Quote:

"Four Season Farm grossed $120,000 last year from crops grown on 1.5 acres of land. 'So anybody who tells you organic farming can’t feed the world hasn’t been paying attention,' Mr [Eliot] Coleman said.

"The movable greenhouses here — or hoop houses, as they are called for their high metal hoops, covered with plastic — either have wheels that run along rails or are small enough to be picked up and moved by two people.

"Seeds of heat-loving tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are started in flats in the one heated greenhouse.
  
My comment: There is no need to read the rest--but do view the photo gallery.  In case you do (you really shouoldn't, for you can read (2) next), web page 3 opened with the sentence "Yet another crop of Walla Wallas was growing under low hoops."

(a) Sweet Onions
http://www.wallawalla.org/onions.cfm
("The story of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion began over a century ago on the Island of Corsica, off the West Coast of Italy. It was there that a French soldier, Peter Pieri, found an Italian sweet onion seed and brought it to the Walla Walla Valley. Impressed by the onion’s winter hardiness, Pieri, and Italian immigrant farmers who comprised much of Walla Walla’s gardening industry, harvested the seed")
(b) sweet onion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_onion
(The Walla Walla sweet onion is named for Walla Walla county in Washington where it is grown. Its development began around 1900 when Peter Pieri, a French soldier who settled in the area, brought a sweet onion seed from the island of Corsica with him to the Walla Walla Valley)
(c) The county--as well as a river of that name--is named after
Walla Walla people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walla_Walla_people
(a Sahaptin Native American tribe of the northwestern United States. The reduplication of the word expresses the diminutive form. The name "Walla Walla" is translated several ways but most often as "many waters.")

(2) Heidi Julavits, The Constant Gardeners. New Tork Times Style Magazine, Nov 5, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/0 ... e/05tgardeners.html
(" the Coleman-Damrosch approach to growing edible food during winters on the 44th parallel. We are, after all, talking about producing greens and vegetables on less than 10 hours of daylight from Nov. 10 to Feb. 5, in a place where the high temperature can be under 20 degrees for days and sometimes weeks on end")

Note:
(a) The article's "Yankee self-deception" is altered from Yankee self-reliance, a proud trait of Yankees.
(b) The article mentioned "Katharine White, the wife of EB."

(i) Katharine Sergeant Angell White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Sergeant_Angell_White
(1892-1977; an editor with New Yorker magazine; In 1929, she left her first husband, a lawyer, and married a younger man, a young writer she had recommended be hired by [New Yorker founder Harold] Ross, EB White; Her only published book (as Katharine White), titled Onward and Upward in the Garden, was published after her death)
(ii) Katharine Sergeant White Papers. Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collection, undated.
http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/speccoll/guides/kswhite.shtml
("Katharine Sergeant was born in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1892, the youngest of Bessie and Charles Spencer Sergeant's three daughters. In 1914, White graduated from Bryn Mawr College, where one of her older sisters, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, had received a degree in 1903. She married her first husband, Ernest Angell in 1915")

(c) For Ferragamos, see Salvatore Ferragamo Italia SpA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Ferragamo_Italia_S.p.A.
(founded by Italian Salvatore Ferragamo [1898-1960] in 1928 at Florence)
(d) Alice Waters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Waters
(1844- )
(e) Four Season Farm is located at Harborside, Maine.

For Cape Rosier and Harborside, Maine, see Brooksville, Maine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksville,_Maine
(a town in Hancock County, Maine; As of the 2010 census, the town population was 934; It contains the villages of North Brooksville, South Brooksville (on Buck's Harbor), West Brooksville, Brooksville Corner, and Harborside (on Cape Rosier)")
(f)  The article described Ms Barbara Damrosch as "a whippetlike former New Yorker."  

whippet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whippet
(g) The article stated, "The glass greenhouses slide manually back and forth on runners."

(i) runner (n):
"4a : either of the longitudinal pieces on which a sled or sleigh slides
b : the part of a skate that slides on the ice : BLADE
c : the support of a drawer or a sliding door"
www.m-w.com
(ii) For definition 4a, see sled
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sled
(A sled, sledge, or sleigh is a land vehicle with a smooth underside or possessing a separate body supported by two or more smooth, relatively narrow, longitudinal RUNNERS that travels by sliding across a surface)

(h) The article remarked, "While some plants respond well to being grown in greenhouses [unheated, in winter] * * * crops like strawberries are protected under straw mulch until the spring. 'The system is beautiful and simple,' [Eliot] Coleman adds. 'We extend the season enormously by choosing cold-hardy crops. It’s a very passive approach.' Among the winter crops they grow are tatsoi, bok choy, arugula, mâche, kale, claytonia and spinach."

* tatsoi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatsoi
* For arugula, see Eruca sativa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruca_sativa
(the name ultimately derive from the Latin word eruca, a name for an unspecified plant in the family Brassicaceae, probably a type of cabbage)
* For mâche, see corn salad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_salad
(Valerianella locusta (Linnaeus))
* kale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale
* claytonia perfoliata
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytonia_perfoliata
(section under the heading "Uses")


(3) Nancy Harmon Jenkins, Safe From Maine's Cold Winds, Salad Greens Sprout Happily. New York Times, Feb 23, 1994.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/2 ... sprout-happily.html

Quote:

"But it's a different world inside the 32-foot-long growing tunnel in a field near their house.

"The heat inside the tunnel comes from the sun's light penetrating the translucent plastic cover.

"It is done quite simply. In mid-October, the plastic tunnel, an ingenious structure of bent steel rods arching over a wooden frame, was slid forward on wooden skids to cover beds of carrots, kale, leeks and other cool-weather vegetables. The tunnel will remain there throughout the winter to shelter more sowings of carrots and peas for an early spring harvest.

"When the weather has warmed enough for these vegetables to thrive outdoors, the tunnel will be pushed back again over beds of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other vegetables that need more heat than a normal Maine summer can provide.

"The tunnel idea, he said, was inspired by Dutch greenhouses made of glass and mounted on railway tracks.

My comment: There is no need to read the rest. The "tunnel" seems to me is a sliding greenhouse ABOVE, not below, the ground.

(4) Ann Raver, CUTTINGS; Ready for Winter: Planting a Cold Frame. New York Times, Nov 4, 2001.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/0 ... g-a-cold-frame.html

Quote:

I "then rake in about two inches of compost, to give my winter salad garden a good start. I don't dig the compost in, really, because the more I read about soil, the less I want to disturb the work of the earthworms and micro-organisms that are knitting such an intricate web of nutrients and beneficial bacteria and fungi just beneath the soil surface.

"Two of my soil gurus are Eliot Coleman * * * and Dr. Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist based at Oregon State University, whose Web site, www.soilfoodweb.com, so vividly describes the biology of life in the soil that it becomes clear why digging and rototilling are better left to the worms.

"In mid-January, when Maine coastal temperatures go down to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, Mr Coleman and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, harvest about 30 different vegetables from their protected garden, which is a series of growing beds under floating row covers, in a 50-foot-long plastic-covered hoop-house, or high tunnel. This tunnel, which is constructed of a series of metal hoops bolted to a wooden frame, moves back and forth along wooden skids, so that different sections of ground are protected or exposed, according to the seasons. This time of year, for instance, when frost threatens to kill the tomatoes, the movable tunnel could be rolled over them, to prolong the ripening.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest. The point in the first two quotations is that some have advocated no tilling, especially in farming--not only because it is unnecessary, but also because tilling causes loss of top soil and moisture.
(b) For rototilling, see cultivator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rototiller
(used for secondary tillage; The rotary tiller is a principal example; A small rotary hoe for domestic gardens was known by the trademark Rototiller)
(c) mizuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizuna