My tub of lettuce looks like it has been to the North Pole this morning. This is about the time of year I always lose it though.

If Santa has a fall garden, it undoubtedly is in a gigantic heated greenhouse with state-of-the-art grow lights, and oodles of little elves running around monitoring for pests, disease and ensuring proper moisture levels in the soil. We mere mortals cannot achieve that because we don't have elves or gigantic heated greenhouses.

My greenhouse warm-season plants died 2 nights ago, but I am pleased the greenhouse kept those plants producing a full two months longer than our first fall freeze (which was about 6 weeks early this year). My fall garden has plants in it now in different states of being totally frozen, half-frozen, etc. I am not sure if any of them will bounce back from the last two nights' temperatures of 9 and 12 degrees. Some of them might.

I am still gardening, though, with 2 lemon trees in pots inside the house (on warm days I put them in the unheated sun room or even carry them outdoors), and potted rosemary and basil as well. Out in the garage (I drag these big pots out onto the concrete patio every day) we have 2 fig trees i n pots, 2 brugmansias in pots, and big pots with basil in one and 2 Romanesco broccoli plants in the other. There's also the cattle feed trough, which is either 8 or 10 feet long and 22" wide and about 8 or 9" deep. It still has perennial onions, many kinds of lettuce, Swiss chard, lacinato kale and 2 kinds of mustard. It also has some volunteer tomato seedings. The cattle trough plants survived because I built a giant wall-o-water type device around them using Tidy Cat litter buckets filled with water on all 4 sides of the trough. I stacked them 2 levels high and covered them with black plastic to help them absorb more heat. On normal nights, there is one layer of Agribon over the plants, and on cold nights we toss a layer of blankets over them. Between these scattered container plantings, I am able to do just enough gardening to keep me sane.

All my plantings are at the mercy of the weather, me and my schedule. I hurriedly tossed blankets over the lettuce before I left the house for a fire yesterday. When I arrived home the temperature was only 37 and the plants I'd left outside were fine. If we'd been out another 3 or 4 hours, everything likely would have frozen before I got home to it. So, to some extent, luck plays a role in how long I can/will keep the container plants going. Of course, I hope the lemons make it through the winter inside and that the figs survive the cold out in the garage as well.

Dawn: "I am still gardening though." Of course you are!

I love the wall-o-water setup around the cattle trough - two levels of Tidy Cat litter buckets covered by black plastic, then covered by Agribon and/or blankets?

Can anyone take a photo? I'm sure you would win an award for ingenious solutions to formerly unsolvable gardening problems.

If I hadn't been reading your posts for the last year, I'd think you were kidding! That system can't be fast to put together. You are "still gardening" because you are determined -- and incredibly ingenious!

I thought I was over-the-top when it comes to gardening, but I don't hold a candle to you! Go girl!!

Pam

Santa would have a greenhouse heated by a biogas digester fueled by all the reindeer poop.

I so wish I had a biogas digester for my horse manure, so I could heat the greenhouse I do not yet have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2SMQGUuY3g

Actually, I understand biogas digesters do not like cold weather very well.

Oh well, it was just a thought...

Pam, I'll try to get DS to take a photo for me and post it, but it won't happen until Friday at the earliest because he works a 24-hour shift tomorrow. I am technology-challenged and don't do photos.

I have been saving Tidy Cat litter buckets and using them for various things since we moved here in 1999. Every now and then Tim takes some of the Cat Litter buckets to the fire station for general use as buckets for when they need to clean stuff, etc., , and I silently seethe. I need my buckets more than they do. lol Even when used outside all the time, they usually last for several years before they get brittle and break. I wanted to stack them three rows high instead of two but was afraid that another layer of buckets would block late-afternoon sun too much. I find the fact that small volunteer tomato plants ranging from 4 to 8" in height survived a 12-degree night with the protection of that homemade WOW to be just amazing. One tomato plant was damaged, but it isn't dead, or at least the bottom half of it is still alive.

Waurika, But....if the raindeer poop biomass digester was located inside the greenhouse, the heat from the greenhouse ought to make it warm enough to work. On sunny days even in the dead of winter and with 50% aluminet shadecloth on the greenhouse, it still gets up to 140 degrees in there if the doors and vents are closed.

I'll be watching for Santa Claus' new book: Eco-Farmer Santa Shares His Winter Gardening Tips....Including How To Heat Your Greenhouse With A Reindeer Biomass Digester". Watch for it on Amazon.com in December 2013 just in time for Christmas sales. Farmer Santa will be featured on the cover of the book, standing next to Rudolph and a big steaming pile.....

Dawn

Dawn, have you been out in the cold too long??? LOL

I have been in North Pole AK. (about 20 miles from Fairbanks), sunshine is in short supply in the winter. I expect the "Real" North Pole is even in shorter supply.

Larry

Larry, I have been there also, but only to visit. We have friends here, who have a daughter that just moved from there. I wouldn't want to live there.

Larry, North Pole Alaska in June has plenty of sunshine! I was there in June and didn't sleep the whole week.
Santa was still there.......I didn't see a quick summer garden.
Although, my mother had one in Fairbanks and the veggies were huge!

Alaska is wonderful in the summer, and the cool season crops do great. I have seen more greenhouses in Alaska than I have down here.

Carol, I was visiting Alaska also. I spent 4 months there. I traveled most of the paved roads plus the haul road that goes along the pipeline, I only went up as far as Wiseman, about 75 miles north of the Arctic Circle. I spent most of my time alone, sleeping in the camper shell on my little truck along many of the beautiful highways. At times I felt as if I were the only person on earth.

I was able to see the Fairbanks Fair. The prize cabbage that year was 35#, 50# the year before.

Larry

Moi that has been nearly everywhere, has been to North Pole, Alaska too!

I used to board my horse on Badger Road, right across the slew from from famous sled dog racer George Attla. Come winter he would use the hay pastures of the horse farm as part of his sled dog trails.

Yes, the veggies do grow HUGE in Alaska!http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamuseum/2621149745/

Dawn, I had already thought of putting a biogas digester inside a greenhouse. But it would take me forever going in & out hauling the horsey poop, that I figured I would freeze the plants inside with the temp drop from all the in & out of the door. Plus, the added cost of that much more space under roof too! Maybe after I win the lottery jackpot. ;)

Larry, I was visiting North Pole, but I lived in Alaska. Actually I lived there two different times. The first time I lived in Anchorage for 4 years, and the second time, Anchorage for 2, then Wasilla for 2.

Carol, I liked Anchorage and Wasilla both. I liked Valdez also, but I would hate to live anywhere up there. The summer was great, but I think the winter would have kill me.

The best thing about Alaska is, there is so much land and so few people.

It might have bothered me if I had been home, but I worked. In winter, I went to work in the dark and came home in the dark, and during the day I was so busy that I didn't have time to think about it. During the summer it was fantastic.

A lot of women got serious cabin fever in the winter and some people would have to put foil on their windows so they could sleep. I found winter to be fun because the cold is dry and you can play outside. We loved to tube down the hills, and ice skate.

After we moved to Oklahoma (east of Norman), my children said they all needed to talk to me about something. I thought they had a serious problem so we planned a time later that night so we could talk about it. Their problem.....they all wanted a new winter coat because they were freezing at the bus stop. We went the next day and bought longer coats that were water resistant and would stop they wind, and that solved the problem.

Our boys love it there and would love to go back. I have never had a desire to live anywhere cold since I broke my back. I have 9 inches of steel going down both sides of my spine and it gets cold. I never had trouble with the cold before I got Harrington rods in my back, but if I get too cold now, I just shake all over.

Valdez is a nice place to visit....ends there for me.

Alaska is the one place that I have lived where no one cares what anyone else does, or wears, or how much money they make, etc. If you went 'out on the town', one table might be in formal wear and the next one in blue jeans, and no one cared. It was a place where everyone lived their own life the way they wanted to live it, and if didn't hurt someone else, they were just left alone.

I loved the sled dog races. Of course, in Anchorage it wasn't a sure thing that you would have enough snow for the beginning of the race.

We still had a house in Wasilla for several years after we moved back to the 'lower 48'. After Al retired from the USAF and we were living in Ohio, he and our son drove back to Wasilla to work on the house. The repairs took 3 days, but they were gone two months. I think the fishing was just too good. LOL

I get serious cabin fever here in cold winters, so I guess I would have been a total basket case in Alaska.

We have three Christmas parties in the next three days, so I am fairly close to being a basket case already. All I've done the last two days has been heavy-duty Christmas preparations. I haven't even had time to do more than just glance at the latest gardening catalogs to arrive.

We have a Red Flag Fire Warning today so I am glad all my party preps are done in case we have fires today.

The kale and Swiss Chard that froze when we went to 12 degrees the other night are starting to put out new growth already, so my fall garden might not be completely dead yet, and the purple cabbage (I'd already harvested most of the green cabbage) looks fine. The green was the early variety, and the purple the late, but I think that if we don't have another big round of bitterly cold weather, the purple cabbage will be ready to pick in about 3 weeks. By then, it will be 2013 already.