Walipini provides fresh produce all winter
In-ground greenhouse in Digby County living up to its potential
The wind may be howling and the snowbanks piling up, but Lester Doucet and Judy Melanson are comfortable in knowing that fresh greens and vegetables are available year-round from the walipini on their Lake Doucet, Digby County, property.
Melanson says the walipini, which was built several years ago, was Doucet's idea.
“He’d been thinking about it for close to a decade and we had been saving wood and windows that we planned on using in another greenhouse,” she says.
These in-ground greenhouses derive their name (meaning place of warmth) from the Aymara Indian language. They share a similar concept to the pineapple pit used to cultivate pineapple and other exotic fruits during the Victorian era in Britain.
Doucet researched as much as he could about the structures on YouTube. The couple found information on them in other parts of the world, but couldn’t find any that had been built in the Maritime provinces.
They learned the structure had to be positioned southwards to receive the best amount of sunlight during the winter months. During the summer, temperatures soar inside the structure, literally cooking the plants.
“We figured that out when the plants started to turn white and crumble. The heat and light literally turn the leaves to paper,” says Melanson.
So, during the summer, a shade cloth is now placed over the glass to diffuse the sunlight.
If they’d used plastic, Melanson thinks they might have avoided the scorching problem.
“Glass can really fry your plants. In the olden days, they used to whitewash the glass with lime to diffuse the sun,” she says.
The couple used cement blocks, wood and metal poles to construct the 25-by-10 foot structure. The project was pretty much completed when the weather delivered a setback. There was a huge rainstorm and the highest wall in the walipini collapsed.
“What a mess," Melanson recalls. "We had to start from scratch."
When Doucet redid the work, he poured a cement brace in the middle and added metal poles to help support the structure in places.
Reclaimed wood from old barns was used to make a wall on top of the soil and tarpaper and a vapour barrier were placed behind it.
The walipini is about five feet deep on the low wall, the back wall is 10 feet. Dirt from excavating the hole for the walipini was used to fill in around it to give it some insulation.
Melanson suggests to do it properly, a cement foundation should be poured. She says their walipini was an experiment to see how it would work.
“The ground shifts and you have to jigger it every year, but so far it’s still standing,” she says.
Gardening is a form of relaxation for the couple who work for Re/Max real estate. Melanson says if they had more time, they’d be able to grow much more produce.
“We produce a lot of the food that we eat – vegetables, garlic, lots of onions and so much more.”
Much of it is eaten fresh but a lot is also frozen. For the new year, Melanson made marmalade from oranges grown on a potted tree in the walipini.
One fruit she’s not particularly fond of is strawberries. Her grandfather used to grow and ship them on the ferry from Yarmouth to Boston at the turn of the century.
"I like gardening, but I’m not a huge fan of strawberries,” she laughs. “I’ve eaten my fair share.”
The couple are strong advocates of Charles Dowding’s no-dig method of gardening. They find it cuts down a lot on weeding and time.
“You’re never tilling; you’re just constantly putting a layer of compost over what you grew the year before. It really makes a huge difference. It cuts down on bugs and is really a wonderful way to garden,” says Melanson.
THE PLANNING PROCESS
Growing in the walipini does take some planning. Vegetables have to be planted in late July for harvest during the winter. The couple doesn’t use extra heat or lighting in their walipini and the temperature typically stays around 10 C. Tomatoes and other heatloving crops would likely require more heat and light to flourish, Melanson says.
Virginia Smith, a former resident of Weymouth, says she was thrilled to transform her long-neglected, unused firewood chute into a walipini/mini greenhouse. She thanks Doucet and Melanson for the inspiration and describes how she tackled the project.
“I basically replaced the roofing and wood cladding with transparent greenhouse siding. It wasn’t difficult,” she says.
She believes that if the walipini had a straight south orientation, it would have worked better than the existing southeast location.
Improvements, she says, she would have made include double walling the aboveground transparent siding. Because it was only singlewalled, the temperature higher up in the walipini fell below zero.
“Such an undertaking is a long-term project and you need time to experiment,” says Smith. “I also would have banked the soil up higher around the cement foundation."
As it was, it worked really well as a spring and fall greenhouse.
When members of the
Nova Scotia Association of Garden Clubs Facebook Group were asked if the idea of a walipini appealed to them, many responded.
Tina Strudwick Comeau, an Annapolis Valley gardener, provided an especially attractive description. She says she loves going outside before meal prep every day and collecting fresh greens.
“I’ve grown lettuce, spinach, fresh herbs, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, beet greens and chard all winter. Also, come the end of February, I start all my perennials (from seed) and then in April, all my annuals," she says. "I have a roadside stand that I sell a ton of perennials and annuals from, thanks to my walipini. So I am a huge fan! Highly recommend."
Tender shrubs like figs and oranges are brought inside the walipini for winter. The orange tree carried a heavy crop of fruit around Christmastime.