How Can I Grow Vegetables in Extreme Weather Conditions?

Weather extremes during the past couple of years has made gardening more difficult.

With the price of food going up and up during the past year and with food prices expecting to continue going up, many people are putting in vegetable gardens for the first time. However, one of the causes of the increased food prices is the extremes in weather. Several unexpected cold snaps have dipped deep into regions of the world that have not seen cold like this in over a century or sometimes ever. Dry hot weather is forecast for other parts of the world like the western half of the United States. Flooding has plagued still other parts of the globe. Can anyone grow food in these extremes? The answer is yes. Whether it too cold, too hot, too wet, or too dry there are things that you can do to improve your chances of having a fruitful vegetable garden this season.

Gardening in Excessive Cold Temperatures

One of the easiest things any of us can do when frosts or freezes threaten to harm our cold sensitive plants is to cover the plants with some sort of insulative, but light material. However, if the cold weather lasts for more than a few hours or the plants are not exposed to sunlight for a long time, this method will be ineffective over the long-haul.

Another thing that we can do is to cover a complete row of plants with what is called a low tunnel. This is usually a…