Winds were still gusting up to 28 mph today. When your SIP garden's on the roof this presents unique challenges, including how to minimize fertilizer ring blow-off, keep delicate plant starts from snapping, and secure the plastic evaporation barrier on top. Coupled with a compulsive need to plant tomatoes, we get this...
Yep, I grabbed a staple gun and put up a wind-breaking bedsheet. Easy application on Art's wood trellis. It helped keep yesterday's newly planted (and fragile) tomatoes from being decapitated. I staked them too.
Then I moved most of my planting operation inside the greenhouse, filling SIP buckets about half full with potting mix from the large outdoor bin before carrying them in to do the rest (good upper body workout for sure).
Tomatoes
relax in the wind-free greenhouse
Happy for that greenhouse am I. Visitors often ask if we use it for growing during the winter (it's unheated and this is Chicago, so no). What do we use it for? Organizing the myriad bits and bobs needed for SIP gardening, for storage...and for planting on endlessly windy days like those this strange spring. I did get six tomatoes in today and in they will remain until the weather calms.
Also staked every single vegetable planted outside. You can see these peppers have had their lower leaves ripped off by the wind. Now they've got nice bamboo stakes to lean on.
Hoping the sheet holds...and for calm.
