Re: [gardeners] questions

Harry Boswell (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 22 Dec 2000 10:43:41 -0600

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lorraine Richardson" <Lorraine_Richardson@furrs.com>
To: <gardeners-digest@globalgarden.com>
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2000 10:20 AM
Subject: [gardeners] questions


> Hi,
>    Well, Christmas isn't even here yet and I'm about to die of 
> spring fever.  I'm still able to work in the garden, I live in 
> Albuquerque, zone 6 I think, anyhow I've got some questions.  
> I'm building double-dug beds and the ground isn't frozen yet, 
> because of the sun I don't think it actually does freeze out here.  
> But I'm wondering if I should stop digging until spring, somewhere 
> I thought I read that it's bad for the soil structure to dig it up when 
> it's frozen (or close to frozen).  
> I'm also building row cover hoops, with rebar hammered into the 
> ground and plastic pipe hooped over it.  I've got two questions about 
> that.  Somewhere on the net I saw these clips that clip over the plastic 
> onto the hoop, like if you had plastic pipe that was really thin-walled 
> so you could cut it with scissors into two-inch long pieces and then 
> cut them length wise. The only thing I can think of to use is old garden
> hose, can you all think of anything that might work better and cost
> close to nothing?

old garden hose should work find, in fact probably better than anything
else you could come up with - except maybe if you could find some 
old drip-irrigattion hoses made from recycled tires (like the drip
hoses Walmart sells) - these might be more pliable in cold weather,
in case you needed to remove them for some reason.

> Last question - if I've already planted daffodil, garlic, onion, and tulip
> bulbs in some of my beds, would it be a bad idea to hoop-cover those 
> beds and try to grow an early lettuce crop there?  Do you think it would 
> cause the bulbs to come up early, and if so, would they rot?  
> Thanks yall...

I would think you would end up forcing them.  I would grow the lettuce
somewhere else.