The Greenhouse

It's been a mild winter, globally maybe the mildest in 120,000 years. Locally, we're supposed to be zone 5, but last night was the coldest we've had and it only hit -5°F.  Not bad really.

When I first got here, I put up a high tunnel made of 1" plastic electrical conduit.  It got crushed by the snow.  I braced it back up after doing some repairs, and it lasted a few years, but when the plastic went on it, it wasn't worth re-covering.  Part of the reason for that was that we'd gotten a 52' x 28' steel pipe greenhouse frame, so we had plenty of space.  It was annoying though because the gable roof wasn't shallow enough to shed snow, and I had to go out there and rake it off during storms.  At the winter solstice three years ago, there was a snow storm that dropped 16" of heavy wet stuff on us in the middle of the night.  The southwest corner of the greenhouse got seriously bent, and some of the frames broke.  There was still enough to re-constitute, but I didn't want a greenhouse susceptible to snow that way.  I traded it with another farm for a pinwheel rake and a mostly worn out baler.

In the spring three years ago I built the current greenhouse, which in today's terms is properly a "high tunnel", because it isn't heated.  It's made of wood strapping, scrap 2x4 blocks and other scavenged lumber, cedar foundation posts that I cut from my woods, and the plastic from the previous greenhouse.  I spent about $100 on wood strapping and screws and got a 16' x 24' greenhouse out of it.  It sits on part of the footprint of the old steel pipe greenhouse where I'd amended the soil fairly well, and of the three greenhouses I've had here, it's the first one where the soil was tilled up before hand rather than sod.  Tilled before hand is good.  A year after I built it, I dug around the foundation and put 1" foam insulation down 16" on the north, west, and south sides.  I still need to do the east.  I put in sheet metal (scavenged) to keep rodents from tunneling through as well.

So today I was out working in the greenhouse.  It was 93° in there when I first went out.  The thermometer says that it was down to -5° last night, and the soil was frozen a little in places, but I'm going to pretend that's not going to happen any more.

Inside the greenhouse I have a bunch of cold frames.  These are just 1x8 board rectangles, each sized to an old triple track storm window set over the top of it.  Most are 30" x 54".  In one I have a whole bunch of garlic that started to sprout and may have gotten slightly freeze damaged.  I don't expect it all to grow, but I think a lot of it will and it will need to be transplanted later.  In the next ones I planted kale, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, beets, leeks, endive, and carrots.  There are just a few short rows of each.  As soon as I see them sprout I'll plant more.  It's good to have succession.

I also tilled up the middle area today.  I spade it with a digging fork, mostly to dig out any rhizome grass that may have made it's way in.  I've covered some with a scrap of old greenhouse plastic.  I'll cover the rest with some lumber wrap plastic in a few minutes when I go out to close the cold frames.  I'll also cover the cold frames with plastic.  With all that in place, the soil should stay a little warmer and be good to plant cold hardy stuff in shortly.