Underground Cold Frame Part II

The Hugel Cold Frame Process Continues...

This post follows up on the start of the story, "Underground Cold Frame Part I." I was surprised to review the original post, as I had kind of forgotten just how much prep went into the initial stages!

This was the state of the rock work when my good friend and garden buddy, Lee, came over and helped me during September. The idea behind using large rock is that the rocks may act as heat batteries and moderate the temperature swings between day and night. Being sunken underground, the earth should also help moderate temperature changes. And with a little luck, the piles of rotting wood and horse manure underneath might help generate some warmth to help extend the growing season (see previous post for a visual on what lies below).

For the cold frame window structure, we used a mix of very weathered old boards and freshly milled spruce from Lee's property in Wauconda, hot off of my husband Bob's mill. He invited me to use whatever wood I'd like from the milled spruce -- an offer I couldn't pass up. Thanks, Bob!

Lee quickly realized that my design concept would have some serious weaknesses. He suggested we build a frame with the lumber nailed together on end, which I now realize makes a lot more sense than trying to join horizontal pieces with corner gussets. Thanks for setting me straight, Lee -- literally! I am really fortunate for the friends I have.

Here is the base frame, built from 2x6's.

We laid it in place, just to have a look and figure out the next steps.

Next we filled in the horizontal space to accommodate the size of the window that my Dad had given me. I wanted the frame to have an overhang on the Northeast end, since that would give me more real estate inside the cold frame and would not impact the available sunlight due to the angle of the sun.

Testing it out to see how it feels! Yep, if I were a plant, I could definitely grow here. 

:-)

We laid the window in place and I realized that I needed more of an angle to set the box on, to allow more sunlight to reach the bottom. A bunch more rock work followed during the next couple of weeks, building up the Northeast end to be quite a bit higher than the Southwest end.

After creating the best angle I could, I transplanted some swiss chard, lettuce, and sweetloaf chicory into the soil, and mulched it with cardboard and garden clippings. As you can see, there is still an issue with the depth of the pit blocking sunlight, depending on the time of day.

However, the plants are doing well. Now that it's October and the ambient temperatures have dropped considerably, it is pleasantly shocking to reach down into this space and feel the warm, moist air greeting me.

I placed some blankets on the outside of the rockwork for the time being, and over time will try to grow moss in between the rocks for insulation. This has been a great learning opportunity and I can't wait to build more cold frames in the future!

Have you experimented with underground cold frames or underground greenhouses? 

I'd love to hear about it in the comment section below!

Beauty Among Food

Take a break from the work of harvest and preservation 

to notice the beauty that marks this time of year...

The aspen hotbed continues to provide color as well as good eating. 

This is the time of year for soaking it up!

I have been covering the garden in old sheets every night this week and it seems to be helping. We also have great sun exposure for nurturing a garden, and of course literally tons of wood and manure cooking beneath the ground. We had a freeze on September 11th and then things warmed up substantially... however, it has been close to freezing the last couple of nights.

Our friends the bumblebees are still hard at work... we are so lucky to have them!

This bumblebee fits just right in the center of the pumpkin blossom.

(Pumpkins, it's a little late to be putting out blossoms!)

Swiss chard is proving to be one of our most consistent, robust fall crops. I could not resist laying this leaf on the autumn-blooming chrysanthemums. They were a Mother's Day gift one year in a one gallon pot, and now they form a hedge of radiant globes.

Another friend of the garden we are always happy to see...

(on the asparagus)

These roses were a Valentine's gift from my husband and 

daughter and they are giving color well beyond summer.

It boggles my mind that this huge plant with cascading magenta blooms has grown from one tiny seed. When I first heard about Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth and the fresh greens it provides, I knew I had to try growing it... but I had no idea how beautiful it would be.

And last but not least -- peekaboo!

Learning to Sit

In the "balance" of life, which is more of an ideal than a reality, I find myself on the go most of the time. Even when my job requires that I sit at the computer for hours, my mind is often going a mile a minute. The fullness of life has caused Fawn and I to do a lot of her home study work in the evenings... so the idea of down time has been a little elusive. 

However, in the intense beauty of early autumn, I am learning something new. Sitting doesn't need to wait for the right moment. I don't need to get all of my work finished first; being done is only an imaginary concept anyway. The epiphany here is that in the middle of it all, I can take ten or even twenty minutes to sit down with both my body and my mind, and just be. And you know what? It doesn't mess my day up at all. It makes everything that much better.

With this spot waiting for me, how can I not sit? Yet the days slip quickly by, and I may not make it into this chair for a week or more. The Zen idea, "Devote time to sitting," is making more and more sense.

Yes, there is canning and dehydrating to do. But this is also the time to soak it all up and appreciate the gifts of the garden.  I would never have guessed that we'd have a huge ripe beefsteak tomato in our garden. (We grow lots of green tomatoes, but not necessarily red ones.) Better to sit and marvel for a moment instead of hastily chopping it up for the dehydrator...

...because as it turns out, an important part of being ready for winter is having enjoyed summer and fall.

This was tonight's sunset as seen from above the asparagus garden, reminding me that the natural world provides every reason to learn to sit. 

Wood Converted to Food

So what has all this wood produced, anyway? Well, let's take a look...

This is the earliest full size ripe tomato to come from the Wood for Food garden -- and my first time growing Japanese Truffle tomatoes. I can't say I've ever eaten a tastier tomato. Gardening at 3,000 ft elevation means that some years, the only large ripe tomatoes are those that ripen in the house after the frost. This one was a record for us, on August 30th! The plant is growing in the second aspen hugelkultur bed we built, shown at the end of the post, "Hugelkultur Goes Underground." 

(Marjoram hanging from my finger, ready to dry for later)

I have fond memories of eating "green potatoes" growing up. My mother, having married a Dutchman, learned to cook some excellent traditional foods of the Netherlands. I remember sitting at the dinner table with my family in the wintertime, the sun long set, eating steaming mashed potatoes with dried kale mixed in. This year, the aphids left our kale alone, so I decided to try dehydrating some. I can't wait to try some with our garden spuds, to make wintertime mashed potatoes more tasty, and healthier too.

Speaking of spuds, here Fawn is pretending that the potato plant is a hobo's backpack. We harvested three plants together and left the rest to grow a little longer.

Cucumbers! Another first -- full sized Armenian cucumbers, before fall set in. These are our #1 favorite garden snack. A new routine Fawn and I have swung into is taking the compost to the garden, picking a cucumber to split, and munching on it while we walk the dog. This is an amazing time of year. 

You've heard about "the one that got away." Here's the one that got away on us! We've had a few cucumbers hiding in the cucumber tipi, growing bigger by the day, unbeknownst to us. The latest monster only fits in the fridge diagonally. In years past, we couldn't grow cucumbers larger than your average pickle. Yes, we have had great weather this summer for growing veggies, but it seems the hugelkultur didn't hurt anything either...

 

This carrot had to be photographed (yes, it is a carrot selfie). This is the largest diameter carrot we've grown, and it came from the Horizontal Spruce Bed.

This year I was able to get rainbow swiss chard seed in the ground on time for the fall garden. I can't wait to see how long I can keep these ones going! The feel of fall has been in the air each morning. It's not long now. I hope to keep the garden producing through Halloween.

What are your hopes for your fall garden?

The shift into Autumn

The heat of summer seems to have acquiesced, making way for cooler air and promises of a crisp feeling out there, not too far away. Meanwhile, the vegetables begin to mature, bringing smiles to our faces and goodness to the dinner table.

Volunteer squash are especially fun this time of year! We are guessing this might be spaghetti squash(?). We'll know once we cut it open! This volunteer came from one of the first aspen hugelkultur beds.

Speaking of volunteers, I had just finished lamenting the fact that we didn't grow tomatillos this year, when a robust looking tomatillo plant emerged from underneath a volunteer pumpkin plant. Life is good in the jungle!

The garden is buzzing with activity. With so many kinds of bumblebees, we are inspired to try to learn what kinds we have... Thanks to Dana Visalli, we have a regional bumblebee key to look at! It's a good place to start. We love pollinators!

The cucumber tipi has come to life! The plastic has been pulled away so that the plants can stretch and grow and breath. Amazingly, this weekend we got our first cucumbers from it! This is the earliest we have ever had cucumbers. Joy!

Asparagus and nasturtiums... a vibrant part of the Aspen Hotbed

Another view of the Aspen Hotbed, with a volunteer pumpkin that is jungle-ifying the garden. Those pumpkins sure love the hot, rotting aspen, baking in thousands of pounds of horse manure. 

Inside the sheet house, the marmots still have not entered. I have never been so happy for a wall of old sheets! Lettuce round 3 is taking off. 

We harvested a lot of marigolds yesterday to dry and put up in jars for medicinal use. When Fawn was smaller, we were able to heal her pinkeye with compresses made from an infusion that included marigold (as well as camomile and fennel). The raging infection healed completely without antibiotics. Now she is the one to remind me, "Better harvest some marigold today, before it's too late!" 

Now is the time to take advantage of all that's growing and save it for later.

Midsummer Gratefulness

Thanksgiving may officially be in autumn, but summer inspires its own thankfulness.

Grateful that we got real rain, even though it also brought hail and wind.

 

Grateful for the large number of plants that survived the hail and wind storm despite getting beat up...

...and grateful that I took some pics before the hail.

(Asparagus and nasturtiums)

Grateful for the blueberry bed made with spruce hugelkultur -- with catnip to help attract pollinators, Wee Willie Sweet Williams for the butterflies, and fireweed and raspberries on the periphery.

Grateful for my first ever echinacea flower, and for my neighbor who shared the plant with me. I have always wanted to grow echinacea!

Grateful that we caught this fourth little monster (not so little after all the produce he's eaten)...

...and that I have such good help in relocating them. Fawn gives them a nice send-off, with songs about not being scared and heartfelt well-wishes. 

Grateful for the Dusky Grouse, our native counterpart to chickens, but totally self-reliant. They often take dust baths in my decoy garden beds outside the fence. The sound of the male grouse displaying throughout the growing season is an intrinsic part of the soundscape of the Wood for Food Garden, along with the baby kestrels calling out for food, then learning to fly above my head.

 I can hear the Dusky Grouse clucking all around the garden area, and sometimes they come in and help by eating slugs and other creatures that compete with us for food. One of this year's young spent some time in the garden recently (above).

Grateful that the cucumber tipi didn't blow down in the wind storm! 

Grateful for all the people who have helped me so that this garden could come together. And for the new birdhouse, another beautiful contribution from Lee! (Note the rounds stacked in the background -- more Wauconda wood for a new above ground bed for next year...)

Grateful that the aspen hotbed came through again, this time with a robust garlic harvest...

...and grateful that I have the health and wellness not only to grow these foods but also to harvest and enjoy them.