| Feature No. 3 | Spring 2008
Green Cuisine: | ||
At the Food Dance Café in Kalamazoo, Michigan, local foods are on the menu year round, despite the region's long cold winters and relatively short growing seasons. In the latest installment of Green Cuisine, executive chef Julie Stanley tells UCS how she keeps her many customers plied with local, sustainable meals even in colder months. We also talk with farmer Dennis Wilcox of nearby Blue Dog Greens about his use of "high tunnels" to extend the growing season for organic salad greens and other cool-weather crops. And Chef Stanley shares a fresh spring salad recipe! Sorry, an error occurred in this part of the page.
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"I feel a real connection to the chefs, and through them, to the community."
-Dennis Wilcox
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Extending the Growing Season with High Tunnels
High tunnels are extremely useful to farmers who, like Wilcox, live in regions where winter comes early and spring arrives late. But they can be used even in warmer regions to wring additional precious weeks out of the growing season for frost-sensitive crops. Research from Kentucky State University, presented at the 2007American Society for Horticultural Science conference, showed that a high tunnel with two layers of covering extended the frost-free growing period by approximately six weeks. The protection from the high tunnel raised daily mean temperatures by 2.6 degrees Centigrade. This graphic from the Kentucky study illustrates the high tunnel's effectiveness during a spring freeze. In the closeup charts, the blue lines represent outdoor air and soil temperatures, the green lines represent temperatures inside the high tunnel, and the orange lines show the additional warming effect of fabric row covers inside the high tunnel.
Resources: Overview: High Tunnels, Virginia Cooperative Extension All photos in this installment of Green Cuisine courtesy of Carolyn Kennedy/LuckyDog Media, except where noted. | ||
High tunnels, also known as hoop houses, are solar-heated structures that allow farmers to extend the growing season for many fruit and vegetable crops. High tunnels work like greenhouses, but they do not typically use fossil fuels to heat the structure. Most high tunnels are made of metal, wood, or PVC plastic "hoop" frames covered by one or two layers of durable polyethylene plastic sheeting that intensify the sun's rays and raise the temperature inside. As their name suggests, high tunnels are high enough to stand upright inside, making them useful for growing and harvesting a variety of crops.
In early spring, high tunnels allow Wilcox to start seeds and transplant tender seedlings well before outdoor conditions in his region would allow. As the weather warms, the plastic covering can be rolled up during the day to prevent overheating. This also encourages air flow, and allows bees and other insects to move through the structure, which is important for high tunnels containing crops that require pollination, such as cucumbers or melons.
