Text-Only Version
Barbara Murphy, Cooperative Extension Educator:
“High food costs this year have everyone gardening, a little bit
more and a little bit harder, and one of the easiest ways to stretch
your food dollars is to make your garden work through the season and
then some.
Typically in Maine, we have Falls where we have an early frost, a
light one, that if our crops aren't protected, we'll loose the crop.
However, if we protect the crop with some floating row cover or some
blankets and sheets, that crop can continue to produce for two,
three oftentimes four weeks longer into the season, giving you that
much longer time to produce your own food. So, when you think about
extending the season of your garden, the first thing you have to do
is get a framework for the material to be supported with. These are
commercially produced hoops that you can buy at most good garden
centers or through the Internet or mail order. So, you would take
them (they come straight), you bend them to a nice half arch and you
stick them in the ground, giving some air space between the top of
your crop and the hoop itself. You can put one about every five
feet, or certain number of plants until you get to the end of the
row. So, this is going to be the structure that your material is
supported over. Then, once you've got those hoops in place, you can
do a number of different things.
This material is floating row cover, which is available at many
gardening centers and through the Internet and mail order services.
You'd put it over the edges of your crops and over the hoops, noting
that on one side initially, it needs to be tacked down and all you
would need to do is just dig, sod, or ground, and it put it
regularly on the side. All you're hoping for is to keep it in place
should there be a high wind. At the last hoop at the end of your
crop, you're going to need to place your row cover. Now, we are
using Reemay here, but you could also use bed sheets, blankets,
whatever you have on hand--old tablecloths--but this to needs to be
anchored down, and anchored down well.
So, you tuck in the edges and, once again, just dump soil or bricks
or whatever you have on hand and anchor it. It doesn't have to look
pretty; it just has to stay in place. And now we are going to just
do the same thing on the following side, anchoring it down all the
way and anchoring the back end. So, what you're doing when you put a
cover over your crop is preventing radiational cooling. During the
course of the day when the sun hits the ground, the ground absorbs
that heat and at night time that heat is released back into the
atmosphere. By putting a cover on it, you're trapping that heat
around your crop, keeping warmth there even though the outside air
temperature is low. Does this work when temperatures go well below
freezing? No. This floating row cover is good for about three
degrees. Blankets and sheets and homemade tablecloths all would
probably have a factor less than that. Another advantage of this, in
addition to that frost protection, is that fact that if you kept
this on during the day, this acts like a mini greenhouse and it
keeps that warm air circulating around your plants so you do get
better growth. Light and water can penetrate through this, so this
can remain on. However, remember that it is acting like a little
greenhouse--if the day should get extremely hot, it could get to be
even more significantly hot underneath this. So, if in late October
or on an early October day, the sun came out and it was getting to
be very warm, you may want to remove this just so you don't have any
heat damage caused to your plants. If you're using blankets or
sheets, I would remove them every morning assuming that the day was
going to be frost-free.
