Patti Moreno: Hi, I’m Patti Moreno the garden girl.

Mel Bartholomew: And I’m Mel Bartholomew with Square Foot Gardening.

Patti Moreno: It’s November.

Mel Bartholomew: Hooray.

Patti Moreno: Yes and we still have our garden up and running, Halloween passed, we had some great pumpkins and it’s the holiday season now.

Mel Bartholomew: And let’s talk about extending our season. Now, this is only if you want a real challenge. Want to be a super great Square Foot gardener picture in our 4X4 block we can easily build a cover for that and that would support some of the protection material that we have for the garden. Then you cover that with plastic, clear plastic, you weight down the sides or in the corners so the wind doesn’t blow it away and what do you have a miniature green house, right?

Patti Moreno: Exactly.

Mel Bartholomew: And it gets very warm in there, the problem is it might get too warm on real sunny days. So, you have to—it and you have to either lift up one side or open a corner, use close pins to hold the plastic and that fits right into the chicken wire or sometimes you can take a razor blade and cut a slit in the top. So, when the heat comes up they will find their way out and then that real hot air can get out. But when they collapse then cold air can’t get in. Now, if you have a real cold night you’ve got your framework, you’ve got your plastic you throw a blanket over. If the kids were out camping, what would you do you go out at night put another blanket on them, right? We do the same thing with our garden. And you just throw a blanket over the frame can hold the weight and that will make a nice and it’s not getting warm.

Patti Moreno: Because it doesn’t need to get any sun it’s night time so we can cover it fully with something that won’t let any light in because there is no light. There obviously are other methods that we can use to extend our—season.

Mel Bartholomew: If you want a real challenge, I’ve grown through the entire winter when the snow—deep and ice they make cables that you’ve laid down and what you might do is and I’ve tried this before and it’s worked through all winter long. You dig down into the ground, it’s a little bit of work but it’s kind of fun, it’s a real challenge. And you go down about 12 inches deep and then on the bottom you put about an inch or two of sand. And in that sand you run your heating coil. And they come in different lights. And then that comes out and now of course you have to plug that into an extension cord that you have to bring out from the house. And it has the thermo stand in it and it will keep that coil at something like 68 or 70 or 72 degrees, sometimes you can adjust it.

And then over that heating you put a little more sand and then you put your soil on top of that. If you don’t want to dig in to your coil by accident then you’d put down a weed cloth over that. So, you have the sand, the cable, a little more sand and then a weed cloth to protect it so you won’t dig down into it and then you put your soil 6 inches—it’s still down in this 12 inches deep pit. And it’s protected from the wind. Now again, we put the cover over it, plastic, blanket and if you want to put a double layer of plastic you could put double paper in between that. And now, you have an insulated plastic over that.

Patti Moreno: So, you mean that bubble plastic.

Mel Bartholomew: Yes.

Patti Moreno: Okay, very cool. I’ve got a lot of that around. I can try that for sure.

Mel Bartholomew: It’s really a lot of fun. And it’s sort of stretching the point of I’m still gardening because it’s a lot of work but it’s a real challenge, it’s fun to deal. I think everyone should at least try at once and see how it goes.

Patti Moreno: Well, I’m going to try it this year for sure and we’re going to have a tasty fresh salad on our thanksgiving table this year. I’m Patti Moreno, the garden girl.

Mel Bartholomew: And I’m Mel Bartholomew wishing you happy gardening.