Casualties of the Snow

The snow was pretty to look at, but we were very ready for it to go away so we could move on with life.

What we found after the snow melted was that our low tunnel didn't like to have a foot of snow on it...

We got a really good look at the tunnel this past Saturday and it didn't look as bad as it did just over a week ago. You can go HERE to see that photo.  I should have taken a photo of the plants...just got into straightening things out...they look good actually. So just for good measure I threw some plant food at them and then recovered the hoops.

Tom had used zip ties to keep the cover material in place, but it did more damage as the wind blew the fabric around. That was before I made these...

Canvas bags that we filled with some crushed aggregate. I had a couple of yards of canvas that I had purchased for a different project, but decided that these bags would be a better project instead. They are easier to handle than the bricks and they look nicer too.

Anyway, as you can see there are clamps on each "rib" to hold the fabric in place - so I really don't know what the purpose of the zip ties were. So I clipped them off and things are much better now.

Since we were out fixing stuff we went and straightened out the one on the raised bed.

We haven't quite figured out how to handle this poor thing. So we did the best we could with straightening out the fabric and actually pulled the fabric toward the trellis to protect the plants at that end of the box. I think it will work out okay - these plants suffered quite a bit before they were covered, so I'm really surprised that they are still alive - yet another missed photo op. Same routine here threw some plant food on them and then did the cover.

It looks better -

If the weather continues to be decent we'll just keep an eye on these guys and make sure that nothing gets all messed up again.

For this year's Fall/Winter garden I think we'll invest in metal hoops for the low tunnels. First we'll have to research what will be best. Separate hoops...hoops that are connected to a frame? A movable structure? If I were to think about it I probably could come up with some other ideas too. For now we'll stop here and pine away for the last frost.