Vassar Experimental Garden

Depending on how the summer crew has fared, we usually start with a clean-up day- weeding the garden, throwing out broken equipment and other detritus, turning the compost, etc.

Because we have a limited time frame in the fall to get things in the ground in time to reap the benefits, it’s best to seed as soon as possible upon returning to school. We usually try to have some sort of planting scheme in place in time for the first clean-up. The design of the scheme has to incorporate the fact that later on in the semester, certain beds will be covered up with hoop houses, so the dimensions of the beds should be determined accordingly. If we remember correctly, the width of the bent hoops is about 5 ft, so beds that will go under hoops should be 5 ft wide.

Here’s a video from Johnny’s seeds about hoop houses- this is where we got the idea to use aluminum piping (EMT, whatever that means).

The hoop bending tool is in the shed and there is still some unbent piping between the shed and the garden fence.

We used these last year and it worked well, the hoops held up under feet and feet of snow:

Yasmin is impressed with our season extending techniques

Logan's feet sticking out of a low hoop tunnel

In choosing where the hoops will go and what crops should be grown in those beds, use this chart as a guide.