We have had so much rain here, my toes are getting webbed. In the last 2 weeks, we have had 2 gorgeous days and that’s it. The rest of the time, it alternates between sprinkling, rain, drizzling and torrential downpours. There is no way I can get any work done in the garden. It’s far too wet and it’s not good for your soil if you clomp around in there when it’s soaked.

I’ve been concentrating on the indoor stuff for the last while. This morning, though, when I watered the Greenhouse, I realized I better get it weeded. Here’s the before:

And the after:

That’s looking better.

These are Blue Lake Bush Beans. I know I am wasting space in the Greenhouse, but I have lots of bush bean seed and zero Scarlet Runner climbing bean seed. Here, we can’t grow climbing bean plants outside, as we have that pesky extreme night/day temperature swing.

Normally, I sow my Bush Beans in the main garden and cover them with Remay. This year though I am really trying to speed up the growth of these plants, for reasons I’ll tell you about later.

Blue Lake are a heavy yielder, which means lots of beans per plant. That’s fine by me – we need lots of beans. We don’t have anymore in the Cold Room. The beans are really tender and they don’t go stringy.

The tomatoes haven’t done much growing, although they are flowering. They desperately need more heat and sunshine.

The Sweet Green Peppers are holding their own. They too are looking for heat and sunshine. Here’s hoping we see some sun this week.

These last weeks, it has been pretty busy around here. Hoping I get a chance now to put up some posts on what we have been up to. Here’s our Greenhouse – I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in there the last couple of days.

This photo was taken last summer. In my Cold Room Inventory post, I wrote about hunting around downstairs only to find we had no green beans left in storage.  I have got to plant lots this year.

Since we’re not planting a lot of tomatoes or peppers this year, I figured I would plant green beans throughout the greenhouse this summer. We have been having wonderfully warm days, but the nights are still very cool here. Too cool certainly, to plant bean seeds in the main garden. I’ll wait another week at least before planting them out there, and even then, will be covering them with Remay cloth.

Thinking of how I could increase the temperature in the unheated Greenhouse, a thought occured to me. Why not staple up Remay cloth around the inside perimeter?  This should increase the temperature by 2 or 3 degrees and I could get an earlier start with planting beans in there.

While I was stapling it up, I realized I could just attach it half way up for now. That should help keep it even warmer. That’s what I did and later on, after the plants are all up and established, I should be able to staple the Remay up the rest of the Greenhouse walls.

After finishing with the cloth, I started watering the beds. I also laid a layer of compost over the whole area.  I watered well several times a day for 3 days, digging down with a trowel to see how far down the moisture was going. It is amazing how dry the soil is when you first start watering it. It takes several repeats to get the soil moist enough for planting.

This morning, I brought my few tomato and pepper plants out to the Greenhouse.

I have 5 Sweet Green Peppers that have been planted into the pots and they will sit on the shelf there.

This morning, I stapled up the Remay in the one front corner, in preparation for planting Tomatoes.

After I dig the hole, I pound in the stake that this plant will need to hold itself up. Always have a stake or some type of support for your tomatoes, the plant ends up heavy and you don’t want branches snapping off, once the fruit is setting.

Then I put in the plant, usually taking off the lowest branches in order to plant the tomato deeper in the ground than it was in its growing pot. Deeper is always better for tomatoes. Then right away, I use a couple of velcro ties to hold the stem to the stake.

I love these ties – I bought a roll probably 5 years ago and it’s still going strong. As the tomato plant now settles in and starts growing, I will add more ties, securing the plant to the stake. By the harvesting season, I could well have 6 or more ties on each plant. Sometimes, depending on how much fruit is on the plant, we also need to use string. We hang it from the Greenhouse ceiling and then tie the tomato branches to it.

These plants have already set their first flowers. Hopefully in a few months, the plants will look like this.

 Are you growing in a Greenhouse? Would you like to? We sure do love using ours! If you want to read more about growing in a Greenhouse, just click the link.