eco systems design, inc.
Connect With Us on...
  • Home
  • Permaculture Design
    • Growing Soil
    • Forest Gardens
    • Keyline Design >
      • Keyline Soil Building
      • Keyline Water Harvesting
      • Agroforestry
      • Coppice Forestry
    • Ecological Golf Courses and Bio Islands
    • Integrated Weed Management
  • Greenhouse Design
    • Climate Analysis & Controls
    • High Tunnels and Hoop Houses
    • Four Season Greenhouses
    • Growing Dome Greenhouses
    • Simple Season Extension Strategies
    • Climate Batteries >
      • Climate Battery Calculator
      • Climate Battery Forum
      • FAQ
  • Building Design
    • Solar Homes
    • Commercial Projects
    • Mountain Architecture
  • Edible School Yards
    • Roaring Fork High School Garden
    • Yampah Mountain High School Growing Dome
  • About
    • Bios
    • Contact
    • Links
    • Blog

simple season extension strategies
easy strategies for stretching your growing season

Nearly every serious gardener in a cold climate eventually looks to extend their growing season, either to begin earlier in the spring, or to grow longer into the autumn.  Cold frames and row covers are the two most common methods for protecting your crops before late frost in the spring and after early frost in the autumn.  Materials for these simple structures are available in most lumber yards, hardware stores, and gardening catalogs.
Picture
Niki Jabbour has written a detailed guide to help us understand how to extend our growing season, using both row covers and cold frames.  You can view her book "Year-Round Vegetable Gardener" at Amazon.com



Picture
Clara Coleman is a four-season farming consultant, specializing in methods developed by her father, Eliot Coleman, at Four Season Farm in Maine.  Many of Eliot's invented tools, as well as all things row cover and movable hoop- houses, can be found in Johnny's Seed Catalog and at Rimol Greenhouse Systems.

Picture
Eliot Coleman ~ Four Season Farm in Maine ~ His classic book on simple winter growing:
The principle concepts described in the book are alarmingly simple – cold hardy veg varieties, a double layer of protection (like a cold frame inside a polytunnel) and cleverly planned successional planting – but the results and glorious colour photos are genuinely inspiring. As with so many stories of success in the brave new world of ecological or 'deep-organic' food production, the breakthrough at Four Season Farm was a realization that working within the limits of nature yielded the best results. For Eliot Coleman, greenhouses ceased to be an expensive bubble of perpetual summer and became a cost effective, elegant creation of a nice mild winter. Or, as he describes it himself, '"'It was like the difference between sitting inside by the fire on a cold day and being outside with enough layers of clothes on to keep you comfortable."



a slide show gallery of simple season extension strategies:
eco systems design, inc
po box 631 ~ basalt, colorado  81621
Jerome Osentowski, president: 970.456-3480
Michael Thompson, vice president: 970.274.0634
Proudly powered by Weebly