I took a walk through a community garden in the middle of February - no one else was there.
About 6 inches of snow was on the ground, and it had been below freezing day and night for weeks, but look what was found! Healthy green lettuce under these clear plastic cloches [1].
There were 4 of these “bell jars” in the garden plot, the two in the image above have 1/2” diameter holes in their tops, while two others (not in the image) had blue masking tape closing the holes. I assumed that the gardener – who it appeared hadn’t been around since the fall – was conducting an experiment as to whether ventilated or non-ventilated cloches best supported the lettuce.
From my non invasive assessment, the ventilated lettuces appeared healthier and a bit bigger than the non-ventilated. It seems foreign and incongruous for leafy lettuce to be growing in the snow – yet here you have it. Perhaps we have a lot of assumptions about gardening which we should adjust.
It is significant that the snow around the outside of the plastic has melted – clearly radiant heat from the inside of the plastic has caused the soil and air around the cloche to heat up.
If you look at the base of the trunks of trees in the woods during the winter you can observe this same radius of melted snow.
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