build a greenhouse

I want to build one of these lean to greenhouses on the back side of my house.

http://www.buildeazy.com/greenhouse.html

But I’m not sure about using polythene…

I will certainly revisit this in the future – and I know that SOMEDAY I absolutely WILL have one. But for now, I’m going to give up on this one.

It’s winter and the garden is mostly asleep (except for some peas and some oregano), and I am soooo desiring a green house. Putting all my spare money into flying, though, so for now, I will just have to keep dreaming. One good thing, though – when I finally Go For It, I will know exactly what I want and why.

Indoors, under fluorescent lights, the petunias are all beginnning to open their first blooms. I think I planted them Feb. 1. I planted geraniums at the same time, but they have a way to go yet. It was the day before my mom’s big surgery that saved her life. I am so happy to have her here still to show my petunia blossoms to!

For years I have started seeds inside under lights and then I have nowhere to put them until it’s warm enough to go outside! My dream is to have a large, long but simple greenhouse on our property (we live on an acre in the country) and grow lots of things for us, our neighbors, our church and for sale at the farmers market!

We’ve been collecting old windows that we will someday use to build our greenhouse…. we’re having trouble figuring out where to put it on our property tho… perhaps once the snow is gone we can look at this more seriously… or at least make some cold frames out of the windows intead.

I’ve been wanting one forever. Or at least for 20 years. And this year I’m going to start working on this.

A good book I’ve found: How to Build Your Own Greenhouse – Designs and Plans to Meet Your Growing Needs by Roger Marshall.

Looky Here!

Willem was noticing the tomatoes in the garden. They weren’t going to beat the fall frost. “We need a greenhouse over these tomatoes.”

Well, anyone knows if you make a comment like that to me, watch out.

Sure enough, the next week or sooner, I had found three cedar poles, dug holes for them and planted them in a straight row through the tomato patch.

My friend Frank showed up one evening as he usually does at supper time. I asked if he’d cut them off at 10 feet. He did it, assured there’d be a nice dinner afterwards.

At least that’s what I think happened.

We took another pole and lay it across the top of the three ten foot tall posts, and hammered it in place with vertaical boards alongsike the post and the ridge pole.

The next day I went down to the alder grove beside the stream and ‘harvested’ about two dozen tall branches.

They fit into the back of the car easily and scraped a pretty design on the dirt road as I brought them up to the house and the greenhouse site where I put them.

Willem helped me to take the small branches off these main alder rods.

then we planted them in the ground about two feet deep and about a foot apart.

We had to use a ladder to arch them over the ridge pole, one from each side at the same time. We wired the tops down onto their arched companion.

It worked well. Except I really ran out of interest in doing it and had to con myself into working on it. Days would go by and I’d not beinterested, but I wanted to finish it by the time I went to Hawaii, otherwise we’d be into frost and the tomatoes would be toast.

I bought a long roll of thick plastc and we unrolled it over the frame. I used long strips to toss over it and screw into pace.

It did the trick perfectly.