Time to do a video update on our winter crops heat sink greenhouse project here in northern Missouri. We have had snow on the ground for three days and everything in the greenhouse is still alive and growing. Our winter hardy crops are thriving out in the greenhouse and still providing us with FRESH food every week.
The evening temperatures are now consistently getting below freezing each night. I have been sick and have not tracked outside and greenhouse temperatures consistently. In the coming weeks we will need to get the mini hoop houses made and in place for the grow boxes, we are just a few weeks away from our coldest part of the winter. Those cold weeks will be a good test for our system and what it can do.
The cabbages and broccoli have both begun to form heads. I have this sneaky suspicion that if I were to look closely that the cauliflower is also doing the same. The growth rate slows down in cold weather, I am not even going to guess how long it will take before we have heads that we can harvest from the different plants.
However, all of the plants we are growing currently have secondary edibles on them. The leaves are edible and quite good. We are increasing the amount of food we are able to produce in a small space by eating those secondary edible leaves each week. It does not harm the plant in any way by taking a leaf or two off each plant every week.
There are carrot and radish seeds which have germinated in the greenhouse. In the near future we be planting more onion and turnip seeds, as well as a few spinach seeds in open spaces in our grow boxes. Those seeds will all be directly sewn into the grow boxes.