Barrel Hoop #5

Barrel Hoop MicroFarm

For the past week the Chipmunks have been sharing their crops of strawberries with us.

Chipmunk food, also known as our strawberry patch!

Actually they are our strawberries and each morning we get a hand full or so.  We eat them fresh or have them with some local yogurt and almonds or walnut, with a dash of maple syrup!  YUM!
The thing about getting from our garden is that they are completely free of any nasty chemicals, but they do have some Chipmunk spit on them.  On the more challenging side, most of them are just a day before really being perfect for eating, so they are a little bit tart.  Kind of like some candy's, sweet and tart.  If we wait the one more day then we just listen to the Chipper's sitting on the rock saying how sweet and perfect they are while we get none.  Every once in a while we get a really sweet one and we get so happy we could dance.


I guess that we are OK with a tax imposed by the locals.  I think my goal is to get a large enough patch and crop that we all get a good amount to eat.  My dog seems to be selectively blind to chipmunks when they are eating our strawberries.  Other times she chases them all over.

I got the plastic covering off of the low tunnel for the season.  It seems warm enough, and enough of the seedlings have been started that it was time.  The low tunnel really works great for us.  We harvested carrots until late February, and fresh greens year round because of it.  Not bad for being up here in NY state.  Elliot Coleman, a writer and market gardener up in Maine, has written about harvesting year round using low tunnels.  I Highly recommend reading his books if you want to grow, and eat year round from your own garden.

Low Tunnel frame with cover removed for summer

The down side of the Low tunnel use for me has been the covering.  I used very inexpensive and thin plastic that I already had and it worked great, held up to the weight of 18 inches of snow, stood up to high wind, and let in allot of light.  After one season the UV rays degrade it so much that is just starts to shatter.  I end up with this:

 Low tunnel cover, cheap plastic sheeting
after a season and a half it is basically trash.

I HATE THROWING THIS MUCH PLASTIC IN THE TRASH!   But I guess it is not so stable that it won't degrade eventually if left in the sun.

I think that this year I will spend a little more money and buy the kind of plastic covering that is made for this application.  I'd rather not use plastic at all, but I really can't do the whole thing in glass, but I have considered using fiberglass siding/roofing that I cover my woodpiles with.

The hope is that the stuff made for this, like the stuff the farms & nurseries use, will hold up longer to the UV rays of the sun.

After a week of no rain and some warm temps we watered everything yesterday.  We used all 250 gallons (aprox.) of rain water from the rain barrels, and a bit from the well.  All the plants should enjoy a good sunny day today with nice moist roots.

The yellow peas that were planted earlier in the Spring are starting to put out pods.  I turned over much of them to help enrich the soil, but kept a few patches to gather seed from and possibly to use as ingredients for soup or some part of a meal.