Hurray!!! Thanks for posting this forum!!! I am so excited to try the techniques I have been learning about and this will be a great place to ask questions. :)

Marie

Just found this forum today. Have been an avid 4 season gardener for several years and this past winter was the worst I've been through since keeping a winter garden. Without a hoop house or other similar protection, its not surprising your mache didn't make it.

I'm pretty sure you'd have had luck with a mulch cover during the previous mild winters. Over-wintered plants in my hoop house usually start growing in mid Feb, as soon as the light gets stronger. But this year nothing happened until early April. Real bummer when its so cold. The good news is that everything in the hoop house survived. So get thyself a hoop house or cold frame and thy mache shall return!

Intresting post Faithling I have had mache winter over before so I guess it must of been the bad winter. We also had alot of damage to our roses even the rugosa varities. Lost a silver lace vine and even our trumpetvine is not coming back very well. What part of Vermont are you? I live in Westport across the lake from Vergennes. I do want a hoop house and I thing this may be the year after last winter.

What kind of hoophouse are you using, faithling? I'm in zone 4 and lost my hoophouse to 5" of very wet snow. Trying a different one, more like a greenhouse. Hoping for the best. I use raised beds with hoops and plastic over them. On the 1st of April I covered the beds. The 16th of May I planted out some tomatoes that had grown too big for the 4" pots they were in. I am happy to say that they all survived temperature of 22 and 24 degrees. Set them back a little but they are growing fine now. Everyone needs a plant protector of some kind.

Hi Bessboro. Nice place, Westport. I'm a big fan of the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain -- you've got it all! Except in winter -- because even tho the Champlain Valley is warmer (we call it the "Banana Belt") it can feel colder because of the wind and often there isn't very good snow cover to protect the plants. So I'm happy to live where its a little colder but more protected near Mt. Mansfield.

Hi Westbeck, I have an unheated greenhouse with ribs made from home-bent conduit pipe. We used to have a smaller hoop house with PVC pipe ribs but it got crushed by a wet snow like you described. Our new green house has a 5' high stone retaining wall on the north side so the wall provides some thermal mass. Works real well except that I wish the slope of the hoops was steeper so it would shed snow better.

Great to see this forum! Started doing 4/season harvest last fall. I concur. Cold frames inside of hoop houses worked for us. We too had quite a bit of snow through the winter and had to continually "shovel" it off. Everything we planted made it through the winter and started growing again as soon as the light became stronger.(We only received 3 hours of direct sun all winter...when it was out) We're just now finishing up last years lettuce.
I would love to hear more about what types of seeds folks planted and their experiences with them.