Greenhouse pictures finally!

Here are the pictures of the finished (in the done being made sense, not the we’ll never stop puttering around doing little things to it sense) greenhouse!

A little bit of greenhouse background first: We mostly built the greenhouse last September, out of gathered free Craigslist windows and bought recycled windows from the Rebuilding Center. It sat all winter unpainted, with just the plastic roof on top, and a whole bunch of ways for cold, cold air to get in. Needless to say, the somewhat tender plants we stuck in there to protect for the winter didn’t really make it, although, we didn’t really expect them to, we just hoped we’d get lucky.

So this February we had that wonderful two week period of warm, sunny days and we got REALLY excited about Spring. REALLY. We started planning the seeds we would plant and we realized that we needed (and wanted) to finish off that darn greenhouse if we were going to be able to start anything. We thought it wouldn’t take to much to finish, hey, just fill in those cracks and slap some paint on it, who needs it to be nice? Wow, were we wrong. We scraped the wood, caulked the seams, primed, and painted the thing, three different colors. Brandon spent a whole day building shelves, and another building the triangle wingy things on either side of the top of the greenhouse, they open for when its really hot outside. It was worth it. It is one pretty greenhouse.

So here is a picture of the greenhouse from the left side of the yard, kind of by the front deck. The roof extends over to meet the Coop’s roof, so there is a protected walkway between the two. That’s the worm bin in front of the greenhouse, we call them the Borg. They are all named Locutis (that is spelled wrong, and for all you not-nerds, is the name Picard was given when he was made into a borg.). We’ve also fenced off all the veggie garden to keep the chicken mafia out of the baby veggies we will be planting. Those chickens will destroy anything that’s tiny.

And this here is the exact front of the greenhouse, the door is that red painted window. You can kind of see Brandon’s orange chair in there, he likes to sit out there and watch the world, as I call it, I’m not real sure what he’s doing but I let him do it anyway, and try not to bug him to much when he heads out there. It’s kind of his room here in the house, I’ve got my studio, he’s got a greenhouse.A view from the front of the yard. You can kinda see some of the starts coming up, and the interior. He picked the sunny yellow, and we agreed on the robin’s egg blue. He wanted it bright and happy in there, and it really is.
A view from the street, this would be before the chicken fence was installed around the veg bed. Just to give you an idea of the size, its a nine by nine square, and the Coop is five by seven.
Through the door of the greenhouse. Brandon got a pink jasmine to climb up the trellis, it smells great. And that cool hanging house plant. You can see we’ve got a place to hang all our tools along the back wall. It makes finding things really easy.
Another corner of the greenhouse. Those are my Fuchsia bushes to the right there, its not quite warm enough at night for me to plant them out back yet. I’m planning on sneaking a few more of them into the yard this year, even though Brandon’s not a huge fan of them. I LOVE them, I can never get enough, and yes, I know that’s kinda weird to say.
Here is Brandon’s project from last Saturday. We call it a hotbox, and yes, I know that most of the rest of the world refers to something entirely different when they say that word. Thank you Peter, for pointing that out. Its got a heat lamp in the top of it, and no, it hasn’t melted the plastic or burned the place down yet. It stays about ten degrees warmer than the greenhouse, and the greenhouse is about ten degrees warmer than the outside world. Pretty neat, huh? We’ve got Peppers that will hopefully start coming up in a few days in there.

And last but not least, the Veggie bed. It’s mostly fava beans and clover right now, but they will get dug in soon for the snow and snap pea starts that are over an inch tall right now. We just planted bunching onions and leeks down at the far end on Friday.So that’s the greenhouse. I think I’ll wait until things get really going before I blog about the rest of the yard, but lets just say that I am pretty darn excited about this year in the garden. Its the third year, when alot of things really start to take off. And we’ve got alot of plans, and hopefully the Chicken Mafia (as I have recently taken to calling them, cause they destroy anything in their way in their constant quest to get what they want) will allow them to come to fruition. Happy gardening Folks!

Spring is in the air

And it is so horrible! Well, horrible in the way that I need to get work done in my studio and get my booth ready for the upcoming Saturday Market, which seems pretty unimportant when it is 60 degrees outside and sunny, and the chickens are scratching in the yard, and the dog is snoozing in the sun under the tree (getting fresh sap on is fur, the sap is dropping from the trees). I NEED to be in the yard with such weather going on! I NEED to enjoy it before the rain comes! Which may be today, the clouds haven’t left yet like they have every other morning this week.

So I spent yesterday priming the greenhouse. Brandon got this awesome primer that also works as a mask on windows! So you just glop it all over the edges of the window glass and on the woodwork, and then paint your paint, not worrying about the glass, and then when you are done, presto! score where the glass meets the frame and peal the rubbery primer right off with the paint! The windows are clean, and no scraping needed. Sounds almost to good to be true, but Brandon swears that it works, and it ain’t cheep, so it better. But I’d rather spend some money on something that works than tape all the windows (which never works) or (gasp!) cut in around all those windows. And I am a pretty good cutter, but damn, that is alot of cutting.

Last weekend I mentioned the bathtub for the bamboo, it worked really well, and looks pretty good until the chickens climb in and stir all the dirt up and uproot the little strawberries planted there. I put up a little edging fence yesterday and that seems to be confounding them for now. Brandon also spent Sunday building shelves in the Greenhouse, and I have to say, they look really good. There are two and a half deep shelves for full flats of seedlings, and then a narrow, five inch deep shelf that runs around about five feet off the ground for smaller pots or radios or beer or whatever you need to set down in the greenhouse. There is also a row of nails for hanging up tools. Its looking like a proper place to grow plants!

We think we will paint the inside of the greenhouse a bright yellow, and the outside a robin’s egg blue, with a red door to match all other red doors in our complex. Thats what one neighbor called our house the other day. He said we had quite the self sustaining complex going, and I said, well, thats kinda the idea, except its not self sustaining, its just more fun and probably more expensive than just buying all that food at the store. But I digress, red doors. We were going to paint it to match the house and chicken coop, but we decided that it would be more fun to introduce more colors to the yard.

I hope I get some freaking pictures up soon, for some reason that has been really hard for me lately! Perhaps when a few more things decide to start blooming. The Daffies are so freaking close, if it wasn’t going to rain I think they’d get there by Sunday, but the clouds will make then less interested in blooming. I can’t wait for fresh cut flowers.

I’ve decided that I need to have fresh flowers in the house at all times. I think I will stick with this non-new year’s resolution, because it is so easy. Last week in a fit of needing flowers now I bought a cheep bouquet at Trader Joes, and it was easily the best thing I bought there (and I love their food!). A week later and the three bouquets I made out of that one are still going strong, and still making me happy. So if thats all it takes to make me smile, I will buy flowers the rest of the year when mine aren’t blooming to be picked. This is one kick ass resolution, and one I know is not original, because I have several friends who always have pretty bouquets, and one of them is NOT a gardener.

I love Blog ramblings, they are the best. I checked out several garden blogs today, and I even found a few from the northwest! I may even add them to my own list of blogs I love, because I am so garden crazy right now its about all I can think about.

Gotta go and get some more coffee, happy almost spring!

Greenhouse in Progress

Bah! I’ve been meaning to write this blog for like two weeks now! So now it will be a shorter than it was supposed to be before blog, cause I don’t remember what we did anymore. Well, that’s not it, I’m just less excited about it now cause its been so long.

Anyways, in mid September we started building our greenhouse in the front yard. Our front yard is like everyone else’s backyard. Its the bigger yard, and it gets all the sun. So that is were everything is. The greenhouse is a nine by nine foot box covered in old glass windows. It will be topped with clear corrugated plastic this week sometime, we just got it yesterday. So these pictures are of it before the roof is installed!

First picture, the frame: we built this puppy on the last hot Sunday we had in September. It was freaking hot. It kinda sucked.

So that’s the frame and it turns out in that photo it already has some of the windows put up. Whadda ya know. The next picture was of Brandon hanging the door, I somehow deleted the picture and can’t find it anymore so sorry about that. The door, that not two weeks later he puts a hole in with his slingshot that he got for his birthday, attempting to hit a squirrel. I just want to point out that I TOLD him that he was going to hit the greenhouse, and not the squirrel. I can sometimes see the future. The crazy thing is that it doesn’t break the glass, it just puts tiny bullet holes in it. So now our greenhouse looks like it belongs in NE Portland.

And here are just some more pictures of the yard in various stages of disaray with the windows everywhere.


The roof of the greenhouse will overlap with the chicken coop so that there is a covered area between the two buildings. It will make egg getting a little easier. Okay! I’ve got to go eat, and I got this here post finally finished! whew!