eric27

Hey Tim, Yeah the grow lights get expensive don't they. Next year I'm cutting way back. This past year I expanded on something that I experimented with the previous winter, and it worked so well that year that I covered the whole thing this past winter the same way. The funny thing is you know our winter was worse this past year-my basjoo did better this past year than it did the year before when it was warmer!

I took bales of straw and instead of breaking them apart like I normally did I built a wall around the whole mat and also stuffed bales in between the pstems. Any gaps were filled in with lose gaps. I only cut down one pstem, the tallest one, the others I was able to cut to about the axis so I didn't cut inot the growing tip. I put a fence all around to hold it gether, loose straw on top of the pstems, then plastc/tarp all over to keep rain out. I then put burlp over it adn then black fleece over that to soak up the sun. Sound like a lot of work? I got it all done in about 5 hrs. The hardest part was getting all the straw bales, which I'm now covering and hoping to keep for next winter.

I'll get pics up soon of what it looks like now. Like I said this was the first time in 11 years that not only did I not lose 1 single pstem, I didn't lose any top growth on any of them. They are all growing from where they left off in fall. I had to uncover them because they were growing inside and pushing against the cover.

Eric