Nutrition

Athlete’s Garden: Defeating cold weather with soda bottle greenhouses

Soda bottle greenhouses in action. I wouldn’t recommend milk jugs.
The plastic is too thin and collapses when pushing the jug in the soil.
I’m using rebar stakes that are part of my trellis structures to keep the
milk jugs in place.

Messing up my back the other week has put me behind schedule on my training and getting the summer garden set up. Although I promised I would cover drip irrigation in this installment, I’ll put that off in favor of sharing a neat trick that allows you to get your plants in the ground earlier than usual.

At this time of year in the Mojave Desert, it’s a race to get everything planted and growing before it gets too hot. I’ve noticed that when the temps hit 100 degrees, plants die, and those that survive, go dormant. As I learned from last year’s efforts, heat may not kill plants like tomatoes and tomatillos, but it puts the kabosh on harvesting any fruit. I’d get flowers, but no fruit sets. During our second growing season in the fall, my tomatillos started fruiting in October and my tomatoes in late November…just in time for the temps to drop below freezing.

Lessons. Lessons. Lessons.

To speed things up, I’m utilizing a trick from a gardening guru in Reno, Nevada: mini-greenhouses. Simply take a soda bottle, or large water bottle, cut the bottom off and spray paint the exterior white. If you leave it plastic transparent instead of translucent, you’ll run the risk of frying your plants.

Plant your seeds then stick your soda bottle greenhouse over the seeds. Take the cap off to allow for airflow and you’re good to go.

A happy little green bell pepper plant. Toasty warm and safe from the
wind.

The greenhouse will heat the soil, speeding up the germination time and will help keep the plants warm during the cold nights. Another bonus is wind protection. I’ve lost quite a few young plants to the killer winds (sustained at 20 mph with gusts at 40+ mph) we get here in March and April. After putting the bottles over the wind-damaged plants, they’ve come back to life.

Shifting gears…Nearly all six beds have been planted at this point. One reason for using Google Documents (click the thumbnail image below to see a larger version) to plan the garden is the flexibility it allows me to change things around on the fly. It’s nice to print the plan, stick it my pocket and use it to show the kids where everything goes when they get their planting assignments.

You’ll note that I only track the plant variety to see how it fares compared to another at the end of the season. I’ve also marked if the planted was started from seed (S) and the date the seed was planted. This will help me fine tune start dates in the future.

Green indicates a full-sun summer garden, light blue my winter garden beds that get more sun in the winter and diffused sun in the summer (which I’m discovering tomatoes and carrots don’t like), and magenta for those that need to be planted. The only beds remaining are corn and carrots which I’m stagger-planting. This was something my grandfather did to ensure an even spread of harvest dates throughout the growing season. In my case, I start a new corn or carrot plot every Saturday until the beds are filled.

Until next Saturday!

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