The Greenhouse is Complete!

We have a greenhouse!

It's done - it's built - it has at least one plant in it! It took five weekends, but it's built! We are so excited.


The last step was putting on the doors. There are four  - two in the front and two in the back.


There was also more weather stripping to do. I can't recommend enough that you find one of these weather-stripping rollers at your local hardware store - it made installing and adjusting our weather stripping a LOT easier.


After five weekends of work, sweat, a little blood, and a lot of parts, we were finally done. We closed the doors and found an almost instantaneous increase in temperature - it's almost too hot in there for plants now, but this will be a good thing in a few weeks when it starts to get chilly out.



Then it was time to put our first plant in the greenhouse. I have some arugula that's  been waiting to go in there - of course we have plenty of room. Now that we've christened the greenhouse with the first plant, we're ready to create the raised beds.


We're planning to build two beds along the lefthand side of the structure - each about 5 feet by three feet, with a little pathway in between so we can reach the whole planting areas without stepping on our delicate plants.


We want to use composite lumber - most of the pressure-treated stuff is infused with arsenic and we don't want than in our beets and tomatoes.


If we use non-pressure treated wood, then it will rot in a couple of years and we'll have to tear down the beds and rebuild them.


So, the best choice is to spend more money up front for beds that will hold up well for years, and that won't leach arsenic into our garden.


At this point, we're looking into suppliers and pricing it out; in the mean time, we'll be gathering other furniture, plants, etc. to place in our space.

Finally, here's a bonus shot of Tito, who was supervising our work from the cool shade of the shed.

So, what's your garden up to these days? Please share in the comments.

Next time: Seedling update, moving plants from our house to the greenhouse.

On Weather Stripping

Oh weather stripping, bane of our existence.

Necessary evil, sucking up our time. I could probably write an ode to how hard weather stripping is to install, how much it hurts the hands, and how many hours it took to position it around every panel in the greenhouse. But I won't.

I'll just say I'm glad it's done, and grateful to my husband for taking care of it for us.

We've also got the skylights fully installed, and they're designed using a hydraulic hinge with a liquid that expands when it gets warm and opens the window to vent the heat out of the greenhouse. When it cools down, the liquid contracts and the window closes.

We're in the home stretch - it's just the doors and then it's time to work on the interior. As soon as the doors are on, we can start moving plants out there, which is timely as nights are starting to get cool.

In other news, here is a photo of a bengal cat that we have at the animal shelter where I'm a volunteer. She's been adopted, but you can see animals who are available for adoption by visiting www.PetHarbor.com and entering your location.

What's next? An update on our plants, and hopefully some more gratuitous cat.

What's going on in your garden? Please share.

Greenhouse Construction Update - We Have a Structure!

Isn't she lovely? 

We have made a lot of progress this weekend. First, we finished the roof of the greenhouse, which was by far the fussiest part. There were a lot of trim pieces that were hard to attach, and the windows kept sliding around and falling out. But we got it all done eventually. It would have been a lot easier if we had a flat space to work on - maybe like a driveway or something, but we didn't - our property has a bit of a slope.

After that, we put up the wall supports and the side windows. These went in pretty quick, with few problems. After that, we rounded up the neighbors and carried the roof over to place it on top of the walls. We had some adjusting to do, but overall, this was also pretty trouble-free. We think this is going to be a pretty good greenhouse - even without the doors, we can feel a big temperature difference inside and outside.The neighbors are asking for wintertime  hothouse tomatoes already! We  hope we can provide some.

Here's a couple of pics of where we've gotten so far. The structure itself will be done once we've installed the doors. Then, it's time to build the raised beds and put in the plants.

And finally, one last photo. While all of this was going on, our feline plant-sitter was taking good care of our seedlings....

Next post: I'll be providing another seedling update, and some great shots I caught of our outdoor garden.