How does your garden grow?

If you had asked me that earlier last week, I would have said it doesn't! I had been on the road for 3 weeks and forgotten to put the row cover over the plants in the hoop houses. During that time, the temperature dipped into the single digits Fahrenheit. And, the wind and snow had caused some breakage in the hoop houses. Not a good situation!

Before Saturday, I had only managed to get into the hoop houses once, and that was at night when the temperature was in the the teens. Needless to say, it was a disheartening experience. All the plants looked dead. Very dead.

I figured Saturday would be a clean-up and pulling of dead plants. Oh well, another experiment that failed. No biggie. It certainly wouldn't be the first time! And it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Imagine my surprise, then, on opening the door to the second hoop house and seeing green plants! Wow! Of course, I should have known better. Eliot Coleman warns about it; he says that on occasion he has entered a cold greenhouse before the sun has a chance to warm it and despaired. Everything looks dead. What insanity to try to grow things in such a climate. But, come back in a few hours and a marvelous change has taken place. Everything perks up and looks alive. That's exactly what happened to me.

Sure, the carrots took a major hit and won't grow anymore. But, they are still very edible. Everything else looks good. Some of it isn't far enough along to harvest; it will sit dormant now until early March.

We did decide to take down one of the hoop houses; I hadn't replanted much in it and the kids wanted to slide down the hill. So, I disassembled it, using the clips to reinforce the other house.

So, how does the garden grow? Surprisingly well!

Update: I went over there yesterday afternoon after posting this. Amazingly, the carrots are recovering as well! The ground they are in is barely above freezing, but the greens are all perked up and lively. God certainly made vegetation amazingly resilient!