Greenhouse

Random Pictures of Busy Busy Days

August 25, 2011 By Annie

We have been hopping here in the Valley. Sure, we take the time to sit on the porch and just relax, but our days are quite full. It’s a busy time of the year here, the Garden is producing like mad (a good thing).

I’ll get back to writing regular posts just as soon as I can. Until then, please bear with us – our fingers are busy doing other things than typing, it seems!

The Gman looked after our friends place for a little while while they were away. We had lots of goat milk for awhile!

We’ve been eating different salad combinations for quite a while now. Here’s one with freshly dug Garlic, our own Blueberries and Raspberries, fresh Garden Peas and lots of different Greens. It was Delicious!

We’ve been picking and enjoying our Cherry Tomatoes. I have cut the tops off all my plants now, so that the plant can concentrate on the fruit already on there.

Enjoy your day, remember, every day is a gift – use it wisely and be Happy!

Filed Under: Greenhouse, Grow Your Own Vegetables, Harvests Tagged With: Garlic, greenhouse, Grow Vegetables, self sufficiency

Extreme Small Container Gardening

August 13, 2011 By Annie

Way back at the end of March, I started seeding a variety of Pepper seeds and put them under lights.

Weeks later, I moved the Pepper plants upstairs into the living room window. I needed to make room for even more seedlings under the lights in my Seedling room.

Once the Pepper plants got big enough and the temperatures were warm enough, I moved all the Peppers into the unheated Greenhouse.

I tranplanted a bunch of them into pots to sit on the shelf in the Greenhouse. We’ve got Sweet Green Peppers, Sweet Red Peppers, Yellow Hot Peppers, Orange Hot Peppers, Red Hot Peppers, Habanero Peppers, Cayenne Peppers….we have a LOT of Peppers.

I set many of the Peppers directly into the Greenhouse soil. The soil is pretty much 99% composted horse manure. The other 1% is the extra Sunshine Mix from the little seedling pots that I just throw onto the Manure.

I got busy doing something or other and days later, I noticed that I still had 2 Pepper plants that needed to be transplanted out of the small Styrofoam cups and into the ground (or into a pot, whatever). Did I do it? Heck no!!

So there they sat….and sat….and sat. Meanwhile they were growing quite well. Finally I thought, why not just leave them in the little cups and see what happens? So that’s what I did.

Not only did the plants continue to grow, they flowered. And not only did they flower, they actually set peppers.

I took this picture about 3 days ago. The Peppers are actually ripening!

I have to chuckle when I look at these plants – this is Extreme Container Gardening! Really, though, if peppers can grow in such a small container, do YOU have room on your windowsill to grow a couple plants?Even if you live in an apartment, think of what you could grow on your deck or on your windowsill!

Filed Under: Greenhouse, Grow Your Own Vegetables

Greenhouse EBook

July 17, 2011 By Annie

(original post Jun 8, 2008)

I thought you might be interested in seeing how we built our Greenhouse. A Greenhouse is a fantastic addition to any home and it can be built cheaper than you may think.

The picture above is a “temporary” Greenhouse that the Gman made soon after we moved here.

This is what it looked like last year – we had squash, beans and cukes in there.

For our next Greenhouses, the Gman said we would reuse the roof panels from the Greenhouse in the picture.

The roof panels are in two pieces…

We decided to build the new Greenhouse right on top of the oldest compost pile. This way it would be easy to rake out, take away the excess, and leave some really awesome soil underneath the plants.

It’s right next to a pile of Really Good dirt….it’s also right next to the second oldest compost pile….

one+wall+up Greenhouse EBook

First he framed up one wall.

Then another, and another and the basic frame was ready.

Then we finished framing the walls.

We put logs inside where we needed to level out the soil/compost.

Then I started raking out all the compost and adding that good soil from the pile behind the greenhouse.

Whatever compost wasn’t ready, I chucked it out onto the other compost pile – siting the Greenhouse right here was a lot less work when it came to hauling compost.

Here you can see the lay of the land we were working with – that middle hump inside the greenhouse is the left over pile of finished compost.

Over time, I”ll dig all that out and raise those beds inside the greenhouse.

A better picture of the log and compost detail.

Then we started working on putting those roof panels into place. He put a great pitch on the roof and it should be better to withstand all the snow in Winter.

Later, we put the poly around the sides. We used 6mm Poly but Greenhouse poly is 10mm and it would last longer. We had a roll of 6mm laying around from a building project so we just used that instead. (As I edit this post on July 17, 2011, that 6mm Poly is STILL intact. A pleasant surprise.)

I played around with building rock faces for those front open faces on either side.

And here’s what it looks like from the porch – we’re pretty happy! A fair bit of work, but it will add a LOT to our homestead.

This Greenhouse has enabled us to grow larger harvests of Peppers, Tomatoes and even some Corn. If you live in a Northern climate, you cannot go wrong building a Greenhouse.

Here’s a link for an EBook all about Building Your Own Greenhouse. Using basic tools, you save a lot of money building your own, as opposed to buying a new Greenhouse. The eBook includes printable Greenhouse plans, along with step by step instructions.

Lighting, ventilation, irrigation systems, essential conditions – it is all covered in the eBook.

Check out the Ebook here and Happy Growing to you!

Filed Under: EBooks, Greenhouse, Grow Your Own Vegetables Tagged With: EBooks, greenhouse, Grow Vegetables