Protecting the bananas and some of the other plants for winter

I made a blog about my last year's winter protection of the musa basjoo, but they have grown larger this year so this year I am trying to protect up to 3 feet of the psuedo-stem so that they have a head start onto next year.

First I have the corm itself wrapped up in bubble wrap with wall o water plastic at the bottom for extra protection and that is topped with a couple of trash bags to ensure that the psuedo-stem stays as dry as possible over winter.

Fall planting of garlic for better results in the spring

From late September until the middle of November is pretty much the window of time I use to plant my garlic which are planted at all different times, each batch a couple weeks apart, and altogether, there are nearly 1000 cloves planted. The spacing is also variable. I have some of the only 3-4 inches apart, some around 6 inches apart while today, I just created a huge garden bed not in any of these pictures with garlic spaced around 1foot apart to see how much bigger they get with the extra space. It is necessary to plant them in the fall as opposed to the spring for maximum sized bulbs because it gives them an extra half a year to produce roots, growth hormones over their dormancy period, and come out strong once the snow melts.

These in the closest bed are spaced close to 6 inches apart which is a pretty good benchmark for decent sized bulbs. Closer planting generally results in higher overall production as long as there is very rich soil while wide spacing will usually result in larger bulbs so I mix it up.

Maximizing the growth rate of bamboo by adding a temporary greenhouse

If you've seen my previous blog, before I used grass clippings and roofing tiles to heat up the soil temperature in order to hold in moisture as well as increase the soil temperature by 5-10F which worked well however it only works with fresh grass since it create heat through decomposition.

Now that it has cooled down and I no longer have fresh grass, I have decided to build a temporary greenhouse around the phyllostachys edulis moso bicolor in order to increase the humidity as well as air temperature around the plant especially on sunny days. With this setup, temperatures can climb up to 20F more than the outdoor temperature with the greenhouse effect so I leave the door slightly open and have waterbuckets in there to prevent overheating. I have also added more roofing tiles and loaded up the plant with dried leaves in order to help retain heat for the plant.

Here's a peak inside the setup.