Over-wintered Greens in a Low Tunnel

After a long winter it was nice to open up the low tunnel once the snow melted and find new arugula and kale growing. I had seeded it a bit late in the fall and there wasn’t much growth before the cold and snow hit, but it’s growth picked up once the days grew longer and a little warmer. Last season’s kale and collards were growing strong in another low tunnel and fed us through Christmas.

Since moving back to Wisconsin we have had mixed luck growing in low tunnels through the winter. At some point the plastic gets frozen to the ground and is a pain to try to lift up, or the tunnel collapse under snow load. This past season we set up the tunnels to be a little more sturdy and they did quite well, even with the few feet of snow we ended up getting one month. I had tried knocking snow off and shoveling around them until the storm that dumped a couple feet. At that point the plastic was impossible to get into anyhow and I kind of gave up trying. Luckily they never fully collapsed, just one end smooshed down a bit.

Once the snow finally melted and we were able to get in the tunnels, we were happy to find greens ready to harvest, and they sure tasted good! The kale had a sweetness I had never tasted before, and the arugula also had a hint of sweet with its signature bite. The timing for this early Spring harvest couldn’t have been better since we had recently run out of the greens we had frozen from last year’s harvests. Jessica is great at freezing our excess kale, collards, chard and other vegetables so we have “garden fresh” veggies all winter long that come from our gardens or from local organic farmers. About the only produce we end up buying at the co-op all winter is lettuce, and then potatoes and carrots once we have run out of what we stored in our root cellar.

Our ideal winter growing solution would be a passive solar greenhouse, but that is out of the question at our current place so low tech low tunnels work for now.