Hello Zach Weiss
It's exciting to be able to ask you about growing food.
We moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada 7 years ago. Zone 4-5, with about 90 - 120 frost free days. We have about 2 - 4 weeks of Spring. Today it is 38 C. but 2 weeks ago we had frost & 2 C. at night. Our coldest temp is -30 C. in winter. Aug is our hottest month, up to 40 C. & our well gets very low. Temp in the spring & fall often changes 20 degrees or more, from day to night.
We had 5 feet of snow last winter, snow starts mid Dec & remains until mid May. Three of our neighbors lost their greenhouses due to heavy snowfall & high winds this winter. The east coast hurricanes usually diminish to level 1, by the time they get to Cape Breton, but we usually get 4 big storms a year and sometimes as many as 12 big storms a year.
Our water table is about 2 feet down, so an underground greenhouse won't work for us.
We have 6 raised beds 4' x 8' in front of our cabin, so they will be easy to cover over with plastic.
We are new to growing food..... Our soil is clay & lots of gravel & boulders & our land is in a frost pocket, behind a hill. We are adding seaweed, leaves & peat moss to stop erosion & build soil. I am not trusting of food compost as GMO's are in our food supply.
We have 100 acre mixed forest with lots of dead spruce from the bark beetle. We have cleared an acre & started planting fruit trees in the base of the stumps & put in a 60 foot hugelkulture mound, 8' wide, 4' tall.
We bought baby black walnut, english walnut, & baurtnut trees, before understanding their large root system will effect nightshade plants, so we will be planting them further in the forest, or giving them away.
We are retired, with limited income ..... so we need cheap options & our energy level is lower than we'd like, so our progress seems slow.
Our 16 year old Son just finished a PCD with Graeme Calder, 3 weeks ago & has ideas for a compressed earth bricks & hay bale greenhouse. He is thinking we will build this in the next 2 years. So we'll be trying row covers this year.
We are all in love with our beautiful forest & are learning about wild foods & wild medicines.
If you have any suggestions for us, we would be very grateful ..... these years are going by so quickly & we want to make good choices for growing food.
All the best to you Zach
this hive is interesting as it seems to disrupt the bees as little as possible.
