One harvest, two harvests, three harvests, four... Isn’t it good to be able to grow fresh fruits, flowers and vegetables for your table throughout the year? Unfortunately, for most of us, the growing season is limited to only a few months of the year. Cold, wind and excessive precipitation determine the time and time for plant growth. Flowers and vegetables cannot sprout until the soil and air reach a certain temperature. At the other end of the balance, when the temperature drops below a certain point, they go to sleep or die completely. In addition, strong seasonal rainfall can also flood the seedlings, wash them away from the soil, or drive them into the ground, while strong winds occasionally strike and break young leaves and stems. All of this means that, without some kind of special help, most plants can only be planted between the last frost in spring and the first frost in autumn, or on the benign days between the end of the rainy season and the new beginning, or the storm season. In some areas, this has resulted in growing seasons of two months or less—many of the most ideal crops take too short a time to mature.
However, there are ways to bypass the weather by providing plants with the environment they need to grow in the off-season. Structures such as greenhouses, cold shelves and hotbeds can all provide the necessary microclimates for crops, enabling crops to start growing earlier in the spring and mature deeper in the fall. Another way to control the environment is to use bell ornaments.
Garden cloche-meaning "bell" in French-is a protective case that has been widely used since the 1800s. In order to bring crops to the market, French gardeners in the 19th century placed bell-shaped glass jars on individual seedlings to protect them from frost and provide them with a warm, undisturbed growth environment. These early bell jars had no ventilation holes, so when too much heat or moisture accumulated inside, they had to be tilted and propped up with sticks or stones. Since each plant has its own mulch, maintaining adequate ventilation for large numbers of crops is tedious and time-consuming; in addition, storing glass clocks from one season to the next requires a lot of space, which can sometimes lead to costly breakage. Therefore, for many years, gardeners have been looking for ways to improve this basic design. Although empty peanut butter and tin cans-modern versions of the elegant glass domes of yesteryear-are still in use today, new equipment made of metal and plastic has greatly improved the situation.
A common and effective personal bell is made from ubiquitous plastic gallon or half-gallon milk bottles. The bottom is cut off, and the bottle is placed directly on the plant. Provide ventilation when removing the cap; the translucent sides help to diffuse some of the strongest sun rays; storage is relatively easy (if you simply use a rope through their handles, the bottles can be stringed in a dozen); Probably low. In fact, many potential bottles can be seen everywhere on the roadside.
One step beyond a single bell is the tent bell — or its more spacious cousin, the barn bell. The tent bell-shaped cover is composed of two glass or transparent plastic plates, and the tops are close together to form a triangle with the ground as the base line. This design can span many plants, although usually only one row can be accommodated due to the steep angle of the sides. A tent bell with open ends provides less protection than a classic bell, but it provides better ventilation without the need to open it. The tent bell can be made of salvage windows hinged together or leaning on inclined columns, plastic-covered frames, or clear glass or hard plastic panels. A patented clip can be used to fix this type of panel to the top, but tape is also effective and certainly cheaper.
The barn bell-shaped building looks like a small transparent house with two long sides and a spire. It can span several closely spaced rows and can accommodate relatively tall or dense plants. Compared with any of the above two designs, it is also more difficult to construct and the price is higher.
Both the tent bell and the barn bell are easy to carry, use and store. Their main disadvantages are their size—usually limited to three or four feet in length—and their open ends, which may contain too much cold air or wind-driven rain. The size limitation means that a few of them need to be connected end to end to cover a row of ordinary plants. The width that they can expand is also somewhat limited, so they are not practical for wide-bed cultivation.
Somewhere between the bell jar and the tent is the umbrella bell jar, which is just a large and light (usually made of plastic sheet) dome. Like a bell jar, it may need to be ventilated; like a tent, it can cover many plants. It is especially suitable for small and broadcast beds.
Another option is the tunnel bell, which is similar to the greenhouse that people can get. Long rows of tunnels are bell-shaped—nineteen or twenty feet are not uncommon—and can easily span four or five-foot wide beds. It consists of a frame covered with a translucent material, usually a transparent plastic sheet. Its main advantage is that it covers a large area, which is suitable for today's wide-bed cultivation methods. Its main disadvantage is that it is difficult to move from one site to another. Certain types, such as those made of heavy steel bars permanently covered with plastic, are bulky and difficult to store, relocate, or even open for ventilation—although they may protect plants from hurricanes. Another variety uses spring steel hoops to be inserted into the ground and then covered with plastic sheeting. The plastic is clamped on or next to the first hoop with a second set of hoop. The hoop can also be made of a certain length of steel bar or half-inch PVC pipe and then covered with plastic sheeting.
Regardless of shape, size or material, any of these bell-shaped covers can significantly affect the place where crops are grown, capturing the sun’s radiant energy to heat the enclosed soil and air; protecting the area from wind, rain and frost Influence; and usually provide a suitable climate for seedlings.
In the eco-village of Mother Earth News, we use various methods to help extend the season, including south-facing beds and beds with protective rock walls, providing shelter and thermal storage quality; using deep-dug, decomposing organic materials Heated hotbeds; and various structures or equipment, such as greenhouses and bell jars. Some of the latter are being tested so that they may be included in the EcoVillage routine in the future, while others are used frequently.
Others are caused by emergencies. This is the case with our PVC tunnel clock.
You see, our house building and shelter need a cover photo with the words "My Mother's House" on it. Now, magazine articles, promotional works, cover art, and other published projects must be put together weeks or even months before printing and publication. Therefore, although we want to show the house with a summer garden, the photos must be taken in early May-less than a week after the last spring frost, and long before the summer flowers and vegetables are ready. In order to solve this problem, our gardener decided to start planting the necessary seedlings in the greenhouse in the middle of winter, and then build a tunnel clock on the long bed in front of the house, so that the seedlings can be moved to a fixed position in advance, so that they can mature in time. Need.
The experience of using plastic-covered steel cages tells our employees that these bulky structures are not suitable for the five-foot-wide beds that must be covered. Attempts to find spring steel hoops and double-clamp plastic failed. It turns out that ten-foot-long steel bars are difficult to bend into hoops. A tunnel bell made of half-inch PVC pipe seems to be the best answer.
The basic structure of the PVC bell is very simple. The length of the white plastic tube is cut (in our case, 10 feet), bent into a semicircle, and then pushed down to the length of the steel bar that has been pressed into the ground on both sides of the bed to cover it. The hacksaw for cutting and the sledgehammer for driving the steel bars are the only tools needed.
A reinforced "tent pile"—ours two feet long each—is first sunk into the ground at both ends of the future tunnel, slightly away from the bed itself. A heavy, transparent plastic that is 10 feet wide and 7 mils thick is stretched over the hoop and pulled into a bunch at both ends. The rope is wrapped around each bundle and tightened, and then stretched and knotted around the lofted rebar. Tension holds the plastic in place; when the bell is closed, it can be laid down along the ground, or on the sides when a little ventilation is needed. In order to be fully exposed to air and sunlight, the plastic can be pushed all the way up to the top of the hoop to form an accordion fold on the other side. If the lid is loose, simply tighten the slipknot that secures the plastic to the stake.
We have no problems with this structure, even if it is affected by wind, rain and frost. In the latter part of the season, the bell hood has to be ventilated around 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning so that the plants will not be cooked, which is annoying! However, a few days later, our gardener decided to risk frost and completely remove the plastic. By then, the plants had hardened and matured enough to not be affected by the still cold spring night.
Our summer garden spring project started in January, planting seeds in the eco-village greenhouse. As the seedlings develop, they move from the germination stand to the thorn emergence stand, and then into the container (the size of these containers varies from plant to plant). On April 22, a tunnel bell was set on the bed in front of the house to warm the soil. Around April 25, various plants were transferred to the bell jar. They thrive in the new protected environment. From May 3-eight days after planting and only three days after the last frost-the plastic cover was removed and photographed.
Now, this timetable is not the timetable we recommend to ordinary vegetable gardeners. However, for us, it has the dual purpose of providing the required photographic materials and testing the effectiveness of the PVC tunnel bell. In addition, the gardeners of Mother Earth News found that the latter is easy to construct, use and dismantle: the plastic cover is unwrapped and removed, and the PVC pipe is pulled from the steel column and stored next to the outbuilding. All in all, the clock watch has achieved great success.
Our specific problem requires a tunnel bell, but you might be better off using a different design. Each type has its own virtues; if it is a waste of time and effort to use dozens of plastic bottles in a garden consisting of 12 or 14 rows of 20 feet, then if you are planting a small round bed, build one The tunnel bell bottle is also counterproductive. So if you want to use one of these devices to extend the season, choose the type that suits your garden and resources, and then get ready to harvest rewards: fruits, flowers, herbs, and vegetables that you can start early in the season and harvest-sow seeds later After-into the cold of winter.
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