Winter is coming on here at our Arizona desert homestead and, even though the temperatures are dropping, we still look forward to eating fresh kale, chard, escarole, lettuce, and other fresh hardy produce all winter long with the aid of a mini-hoop house. Don’t be misled by the fact that our homestead is in the southeastern Arizona desert. Last year, one storm dropped six inches of snow on our place. The following week, another cold front brought our temperatures here at the Bear Cave down to 2⁰ F here at our 5,000 ft elevation. Down in the valley, it was below zero. It certainly gets cold enough here to zap most tender growing garden plants without some protection.

Last year, we simply protected as well as we could with row cover. We found that without supports, heavy frost and snow broke down some of the plants under the row cover. While it probably didn’t hurt the nutritional value when we used them immediately, we really felt sad about the squashed greens. They looked pretty pathetic.

So this year, we decided to give them another layer of protection. Our neighbor had done some plumbing in a new out-building and had left a small pile of scrap 3/4" PVC out behind his shop. Our Arizona sun had baked the pieces for a number of months and they were definitely too brittle to make a hoop. Enter the PVC angled joints. With a few PVC fittings, a pair of 45⁰ and one 90⁰, we had our own version of a hoop for our mini-greenhouse. By repeating this five times, we had the supports for our mini-greenhouse.

Barbara, our resident math expert (among so many other things), drew out a plan using the width of our raised bed as the length of the hypotenuse of the isosceles triangle that was then used to calculate the length of the top or diagonal  sections of our “hoop”. In the above drawing, the diagonals were cut at 31".

This calculation gave me a very accurate measurement for the length of the angled “hoop” sections. This resulted in the top sections of PVC being cut to 31” based on the 43” outside width of the raised bed. We determined the rise of the “hoop” by estimating the height of the greens at the edge of the raised bed. In our case, we made the side pieces 14” high.

We assembled five of these hoops to give us a mini-greenhouse with supports every 2 ½’. We dry-fit the joints for convenient dis-assembly and storage next summer

We drove pieces of  rebar into the ground at the outer edge of the bed and slipped the end of the PVC hoop over it. We then tied the PVC hoop to the raised bed with plumbers tape and a couple short sheet rock screws. Besides allowing us to level the tops, this seems to support the hoops well enough to handle both the weight of the plastic cover and the persistent wind we have here. 

We cut off a section of 10’ wide 6 mil plastic long enough to enclose the ends of the structure. The fold in the plastic at the center made it easy to mark and reinforce the tie-off spots with 10 mil PVC tape that we had left over from running our propane line from the tank to the house. We punched two sets of holes in the tape and plastic to create a make-do grommet.

Two sections of light cotton line tied with the ends out on one side and in on the other made a system that allows us to tie up either one side or both sides for picking produce or working in the garden.

On the coldest nights, we raise one side of the plastic and lay in row cover directly on the tops of the plant and roll down and anchor the plastic on both sides.  With the plastic shelter above, we don’t worry about frost, snow, or heavy rain on the row cover flattening our greens. The double layer is a bit like putting a down comforter on the bed on a cold night.

This is a picture of the payoff. Yesterday, Barbara opened the mini-greenhouse and picked a few carrots and some chard to put in our turkey and dumplings. What a great finale to a Thanksgiving turkey feed and a great reward for the work of building our little hoop house.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve the way we build and garden.  Many of you have offered great suggestions. We hope some of you will benefit by the mini-greenhouse plans we have shared. We invite you to visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com for more about our desert homestead experience.

Autumn is here in the desert and it’s time to plant garlic again. We’re closing the windows on our straw bale house to keep warmth in rather than encouraging those cool summer evening breezes in the high desert. This is the time of year for hot and zesty meals and the time of year that garlic really comes into its own here at the Bear Cave, for cooking and for planting next year’s crop of tasty and healthy bulbs.

Garlic and onion added to slow cooked pinto beans is a staple here. Spicy bean burros for lunch can happen pretty regularly and make me a happy guy.  Adding garlic to stir fry, marinara sauce made from our garden produce, and salad dressings are just a few of the many ways we enjoy our garlic. Because we use garlic nearly every day, certainly every week, we keep a good supply on hand and make sure we plant and preserve enough to carry through the year. Apart from our belief that garlic contributes to good health, we know it contributes to good eating.

To ensure we have a plentiful supply of garlic, we always overplant. Last year, we went a bit too far overboard and planted 120 cloves of four varieties. Our garlic loving neighbors thank us on a regular basis. This year, we chose the best three of the four varieties and are planting 90 cloves. Should be more than enough for our use and sharing with friends and neighbors.

Preparing the bed for garlic planting is pretty straightforward. We spread strained compost over a new bed. We like to rotate beds for planting all our varieties. In this case, we are putting our garlic in last season’s green bean bed.

Recently, there have been larger numbers of earthworms evident in our garden beds. YEA!  To keep from damaging even one of those welcome little critters so rare in the desert, we quit using a tiller and turn our compost in with a spading fork.

When the bed is prepared, the best of last season’s crop is selected for replanting. Only the largest and healthiest bulbs are chosen.

Bulbs are separated into cloves until we have 90 of each kind. Care is taken to leave the skin on the cloves intact as they are separated from the bulb.

Barbara lays out the bed for planting by running masonry string down the middle and laying out a steel measuring tape between the about-to-be-planted rows. She plants our garlic in rows by variety with one row in the center, on the masonry string and the outlying rows midway to the edge of the bed. The cloves are planted 2” deep and 6” apart in the row with 12” between rows.

In addition to hanging our garlic for preservation, as shown earlier, we also freeze sacks of prepeeled garlic cloves. That’s it, just peel the cloves, put them in freezer bags, and they are ready to add zest to your cooking all year long.  For more on planting garlic in the desert, please visit us at www.grow-cook-eat-beans.com and learn how one of our favorite “bean friends” fares here at the Bear Cave.