Hello Rob!

 AA>> The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own
 AA>> Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You Live |
 AA>> Paperback

 AA>> Niki Jabbour | Joseph De Sciose

 RM> You always find a book for most things...   B)

Operating a bookshop exposes me to such things.  


 RM> If I had a greater interest in this I'd look into it
 RM> better but the bottom line is you can't grow plants even
 RM> in a greehhouse unless it is heated up to a point where
 RM> the plants can survive. That's less efficient to do on a
 RM> small scale, especially when you don't have a large house
 RM> where you can play setup games to steal some of the heat
 RM> from the house to help with that.

A few composting systems inside should help. They always  
produce heat.

But.. It's probably not worth the effort and expense if  
producing only for oneself.  And, if one is occupied with a  
daytime job, that only leaves evenings or weekends to keep up  
with maintenance and weeds.  Even the cost of keeping/ 
protecting chickens is not worth the few eggs they might  
produce. A dozen eggs lasts me 12 days.


 AA>> I have seen frame structures with wiring akin to chicken
 AA>> wiring but smaller, and built with removeable tops.

 RM> My sister uses something similar to that to keep rabbits
 RM> out of her garden, [...] She's just south of Peterborough
 RM> on a property that is 160 acres, much of it wooded..

 RM> ..As in, she often has trouble getting up to enjoy her
 RM> cottage here because she's got to be at home to look after
 RM> her gardens at the hottest time of the year.

Yes.. Peterborough to Parry Sound is a long haul.  At least a  
3hrs drive.


 RM> She's even set up automated watering systems but has found
 RM> them not as reliable as she'd hoped...

 RM> In recent years she's experimenting with growing some
 RM> plants inside holes in bales of straw. That was a new one
 RM> to me.. She had some success but I think had a problem
 RM> with some sort of plant infection last year and had to
 RM> burn a lot of material to clear that out..

Raised beds with controlled drainage seems to be good solution.

But I hear ya.. a lot of resources goes into managing a garden.  
And.. if you can't be onsight almost every day, the health of  
the garden can wane.


-- 
  ../|ug

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