Greenhouse – High Country Living

2021 GARDEN & GREENHOUSE PLANNING

February 28, 2021

by Laurie with No Comment Garden Greenhouse

It’s the end of February, and despite the winter cold, the garden is not far from my mind. The greenhouse has been keeping us supplied with veggies all winter, in addition to what was stored from the 2020 summer garden outdoors.

OUTDOOR GARDEN

My GrowVeg Garden Planner is complete for summer 2021. Some changes are likely to be made, but the plans are in motion, the seeds have been ordered and arrived, the calendar reminders have been set. A few seedlings have already been started.

I have been using this GrowVeg Garden Planner for many years both in my former garden and here in Guffey. GrowVeg has made some changes this year due to the end of Flash Player, and now it’s faster, easier to use, and they’ve made some great changes. I was able to be a beta tester for this new planner, and had a lot of fun trying it out during the later planning stages.

As always, I’ve rotated my crops as much as possible and have planned in advance which beds will be started earlier and which will be later, as well as which will be saved for my 2022 Garlic. This year I will try a few new varieties of veggies I’ve grown before, but no new veggies. As usual, I’m keeping the things that need to be covered the most in the interior beds, as these are the easiest to cover with plastic over the hoops. The perimeter beds are primarily garlic, onions, potatoes, beets & parsnips. The horizontal perimeter beds across the top of the plan receive the most sun in the fall when it is lower in the sky, so I’m planning the crops to be harvested last in that area: my second planting of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, some spinach, lettuce and carrots. All of these can be harvested after a few light frosts, and the sun will help them warm up to grow as long as possible.

Tim & I are planning better ways to cover the perimeter beds with frost cloth for those first few weeks when there will likely be frost and a snowstorm or two. Our old frostcloth has gotten rather ratty & mouse-eaten, so we purchased enough new frostcloth to cover just about all the beds. This is in addition to the plastic we use to cover the most susceptible plants in the interior areas.

Hopefully this year we will not have the problems with the mice and pack rats as we did last year. The bait traps Tim had put out really seemed to keep them under control the later part of the summer. By having them in place throughout the winter & spring, we hope to prevent all damage to the garden. We may make a few changes to the way we protect things from the spring cold & snow with better supports for frost cloth and/or plastic, and make it easier to put them out at night and remove them in the morning.

GREENHOUSE
The greenhouse has been growing great! In the fall I planted some broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes & zucchini. We’ve really enjoyed eating these fresh from the greenhouse. A couple of my tomatoes have produced the best tomatoes I’ve ever grown in the greenhouse. The Oregon Spring & Siletz tomatoes have been big, meaty, juicy, with few seeds and easy to peel when I don’t want the skins. Since I’ve had such an abundance, I’ve frequently used them for any recipe that uses diced tomatoes or tomato sauce. I think they liked the location (or I did a better job of keeping them fertilized!).

I’ve used the Garden Planner extensively for the greenhouse as well. The “In-Ground Dates” feature in the planner is especially helpful. The photo at the right shows the greenhouse plan for the end of February. With the Planner I am able to show specific plants for each month of the year. Since my greenhouse is used constantly, taking out old plants and replacing the spot with new ones, this really helps me keep track of things and plan ahead. I’m able to start seedlings on my grow bench under lights, preparing them to go in where something else will be removed. At the bottom I’ve added our three cold frames, which may be planted in March with lettuces, spinach, and perhaps some onions to transplant later to the garden.

GREENHOUSE COVER CROPS
This year I’ve felt like I may have been overworking the soil in the greenhouse. Even though I typically refresh the soil by adding compost, vermicompost, aged manure & fertilizers each time something is planted, I fear that is not enough. Without going to the trouble of allowing a long rest period or removing all the soil and replacing it, I’m experimenting with planting some cover crops, some of which are shown in this February plan. I tilled in some well-aged horse manure or some fairly fresh duck manure and a bit of vermicompost, then scattered seeds of mustards, cowpeas, buckwheat & daikon radish. I’m giving them a chance to sprout & grow a bit, then tilling them in. In some cases, I’ve planted pretty soon after tilling these in, but in some of the larger areas I’m experimenting with solarizing the soil by covering the area with clear plastic. The solarizing should heat up the soil and kill diseases which could be in the soil. Hopefully this will only take 2-3 months and should help recondition my tired soil. There should be an update later on how well this goes, but I won’t have actual “data” and will only know by how well the plants grow. As it is said, “Only time will tell.”

WHAT GROWS HERE & WHAT DOES NOT

June 9, 2019

by Laurie with No Comment Garden Greenhouse

This will now be my 3rd year gardening at 9,000 feet. After some trial and error, I’ve chosen only to grow the things that will grow well in the outdoor garden, and use my limited greenhouse space in the summer for a few favorites while saving some room for early fall planting there. Some of the vegetables that grow very well have not been my favorites (kale, cabbage, kohlrabi, rutabagas) but since they do grow well here and are good for us I’m learning to like them more and cook them in new ways.

Our last frost date in spring to the first frost date in the fall is about 92 days. I carefully select only the varieties that boast the shortest maturity period. Nothing grows as fast as promised. If the seed packet indicates 60 days, in most cases it will be 80-100. For example, I planted Masai Hericots Verts bush beans with a maturity range of 58 days. I harvested them about 88 days after planting. Often, seed varieties boast that they are well-suited for northern climates. I’d thought that those would also work well in high altitudes, but no. We do not get as many sunshine hours in the day as do northern areas in the summer. I believe that this, in addition to our cool nights, slows down the growth of many plants. Here is a list of what grows well and what does not.

WHAT GROWS WELL OUTDOORS

broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, bok choy & all brassicas
lettuce, spinach, chard and a variety of other greens to be eaten fresh or sauteed
root vegetables such as beets, rutabagas, turnips, radishes and carrots
potatoes
garlic
peas
summer squash, zucchini (they need covering early on when it’s cold, and help with pollination)
herbs such as parsley, cilantro, thyme, sage, oregano, dill

GROWS SOMEWHAT OUTDOORS, BUT NOT WELL

(I do still grow these outdoors, but they’re not the best)

onions (they don’t get big and the season is too short & cool for them to bulb well, but after a successful experiment last year I’m giving them another try)
garlic
winter squash (So far I’ve had only one variety that actually produced squash, Gold Nugget, and it did not taste good. I’m determined to get some winter squash to grow based on the success of some other local gardeners, so I am trying two new varieties this year.)
bush beans (a smaller yield than in warmer climates, but they are suitable)
celery (got some thin celery last year, am trying one more time)

DOES NOT GROW WELL OUTDOORS

tomatoes or peppers (they just began to ripen when the fall frosts began, even though they were faithfully covered each night)
corn (tried an Alaskan variety bred for short, cool seasons, but it did not produce)
dry beans (it froze before I had a chance to harvest these)
cauliflower (grew very spindly, did not make a good head)

GROWN IN THE SUMMER GREENHOUSE

tomatoes
peppers
cucumbers
basil
winter squash

ORGANIZATION, PLANNING & RECORD KEEPING

April 9, 2018

by Laurie with No Comment Garden Greenhouse

I’m kind of a nut when it comes to organization and planning, and it may border on overkill. Sometimes I think I may spend more time with this than I do in the garden. I do most of this organization work during the winter when I have the extra time on my hands. When garden time comes, all I need to do is minor updates & notes. My methods for organizing and planning are not specific to high-altitude gardening, but are extra helpful when planning a garden that only grows in a short season, or for making full use of limited space in the greenhouse year-round.

SEED SELECTION

When I begin the process of seed selection for the year, I begin an Excel spreadsheet. Mine looks something like this. I start this process in January, and get seeds ordered in February, before the varieties I’ve chosen are no longer available (which has happened before).

I begin by deciding what types of plants I plan to grow, and make a list. The first 3 columns show whether I will grow them in the greenhouse, the cold frame or the outside garden. Then I begin looking at various websites and books that I have, to determine what varieties I might like. I add notes about whether they are organic, how many days to harvest, the vendor, price and miscellaneous notes about the varieties. I start with a BIG list, then begin to delete those I decide not to order. Eventually my list looks something like the one above, which I can sort by vendor, then go to that website and use this as my order list. The varieties with blank spaces indicate seeds I already have on hand.

KEEPING NOTES

After this, I have plenty of time to add information about all these seeds to my notebooks, and to look up information regarding when to plant the seeds, whether to start them indoors or in the garden, etc.

For this process, I use Microsoft One Note. I prefer the Microsoft Office desktop version, but it is also available as a free app, available for Windows or Apple operating systems, or online with any browser. I use this extensively for all my garden planning and note-taking.

These are the main sections (Tabs) I use:

PLANNING: links to websites I refer to, companion planting information, seed companies, etc.
BEDS: information about what treatments have been given to each bed in my garden
GREENHOUSE: general planning information for the greenhouse
HI-ALTITUDE: various information about high-altitude gardening, my weather and frost date information, best types of vegetables for high-altitude, etc.
FUTURE: ideas to explore in the future
NATURE: I keep logs of when I view various birds, squirrels, deer, elk, antelope, various wildflowers, etc.
PESTS: pests I see, what I do about them, information about pest control
SOIL & AMENDMENTS: information about fertilizers, soil amendments, etc.
PLANTS: This is a group section with sub-sections including: Alliums, Beans, Beets, Brassicas, Carrots….you get the idea.
- Each of these sections contain pages of what I’m planting, including all the varieties I’m planting, dates started, transplanted, harvested, days to harvest, notes about how they did, etc. I also include growing information here.

Here’s a look at my “Brassica” section (under the “PLANTS” group) as an example, showing the page of 2017 Greenhouse Brassicas:

This year I’ve made a separate One Note Notebook, I call “Guffey Veggies”. I used to keep all this information in one notebook, but it got too full of stuff and hard to organize. Now I’m using this “Guffey Veggies” notebook to keep notes on all the seeds I choose. Since I order most of my seeds online, it’s easy to copy and paste this information into the notebook for future reference. Those pages look something like this:

PLANNING & PLANTING

One more thing I did this year was to create a spreadsheet to help me know when to start each vegetable for the greenhouse, the cold frame and the outside garden. It looks like this:

Let me explain this!

WHERE: Greenhouse, Cold Frame, or Outside
SPECIES, VARIETY: vegetable to plant
DAYS: Days to maturity
HOW: whether I will start this inside in soil blocks, or direct-sow outside
START: the day I will start the seeds. This is automatically calculated from the columns that show when I plan to transplant out, and the number of weeks/days the plant will remain inside before planting.
WEEKS INSIDE, DAYS TO TRANSPLANT: weeks, days from sowing to transplanting out.
TRANSPLANT OR START OUTSIDE: gathered from growing information I’ve collected
OUT ETA: The date I plan to transplant or sow outside
HARVEST ETA: This is the date transplanted out + the number of days to harvest.
2018 ACTUAL HARVEST: to be filled in as the summer progresses

This spreadsheet can be sorted as desired: by coldframe, greenhouse, outside, by start date, etc. Right now I’m finding it most handy to sort by start date, so I know what I need to be doing in the coming weeks. As you can see, I’m planning to plant outside in the coldframe sometime around May 15. This will depend on the weather—some things may go out sooner or later than the 15^th.

Hopefully all of this is helpful to anyone reading. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and others may do just fine without all this time-consuming organization. If you just “wing it” you may be just as successful, but I find it helpful to do all of this and keep track of what I’m doing so I can go back the next year to determine what worked and what didn’t.

For instance, last year I started my fall plantings of beets, cabbages, broccoli and a few other things too late. They just didn’t have time to grow before fall. I also found that starting most things in the ground last year wasn’t successful. I am glad to have all of these dates & information written down from last year. This year I will start almost everything indoors and plan to transplant them out after they’ve sprouted and gained a little growth. (I will still start carrots & peas outside, but that’s about it.) I know that in my cool weather, the harvest dates for almost everything will be later than expected, but I used the published “Date to Harvest” anyway. I will compare this with my actual harvest dates.

GREENHOUSE CONSTRUCTION

December 3, 2017

by Laurie with No Comment Garden Greenhouse

In the planning stages of building our house here we had always thought we would eventually build a greenhouse. At our former location in Wellington we had a small, non-heated greenhouse, which provided us with cold-tolerant things like spinach, kale, chard, lettuce and beet greens throughout most of the winter. It also provided a place to finish and harden the seedlings I had started under lights indoors. It was attached to the south side of our house, under our deck, so the north side of the greenhouse was protected by the house. (See photos of this one below.) It was a great addition to the garden there, so we planned to do it again.

We mulled over whether to attach it to the house or build a free-standing greenhouse. Here are some of the pros & cons:

Attached to the house:

Water and electricity readily available
North side protected by house
Easily accessible in winter

Free-Standing:

More available space for a larger greenhouse
More available light for the plants
Would be farther from the house; less accessible
Water and electricity would be more of a challenge
Would require insulation, particularly on the north wall

We chose to attach the greenhouse to the house, under our deck on the south faces. (I say “face-s” because with a 14-sided house, we used two of the sections.) We also decided we would like some sort of heat source, to allow for more growing throughout the winter. While thinking through the options, Tim decided we could have radiant heat in the floor, with a solar collector to provide that heat as well as enough capacity to provide hot water for the house.

The greenhouse is now complete! It is full of beautiful, growing vegetables. Tim is now working to complete the solar collector and the system for heating. The solar collector is standing to the left of the greenhouse in the photo above. Inside the crawlspace, at the back of the greenhouse, is the mechanical room, which houses the water collection tank and controls. Tim is in the process of writing a detailed document of how the greenhouse was built, which will be included when complete.

Pond holds 200 gals water for thermal storage

Since the greenhouse is attached to the house, water and electricity are readily available. The glazing is 5-wall polycarbonate, about 5/8″ thick. It includes approximately 100 square feet of raised bed space 28″ deep, radiant in-floor heating, concrete floor to maintain thermal mass, a pond filled with about 200 gallons of water for thermal mass. Eventually we may remove the lid and put fish and/or water plants in the pond, perhaps a waterfall, but that’s a “someday” project. There is also a lighted grow-bench area for starting seedlings.

Venting is provided by two large ceiling vents equipped with automatic openers, in addition to the door which may remain open as needed. We have installed an oscillating wall fan to help with airflow.

For our first winter, Tim devised a way to put down insulation over the glazing at night to keep the cold out and the warmth inside. After the time-consuming efforts of installing them nightly and removing them each morning, we decided it was not worth the effort. We still put up the insulation on the sides (see

photo) and leave them there day and night throughout the winter. It doesn’t restrict the light all that much during the day, and provides some extra warmth, particularly when it is windy.

Tim has created a detailed document describing all the “nuts and bolts” of how the greenhouse was made and why we did what we did. It does need to be updated with a few recent changes but can be viewed HERE.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2019

Since our first successful winters with the greenhouse, we have since made some improvements to the heating system. The concrete floor, the soil and the pond (which holds about 200 gallons of water) all provide thermal mass storage. When the greenhouse was planned and built, we installed radiant in-floor heating, to be heated with water from our solar collector. Over time, we determined that this was not necessary. The concrete floor and the soil beds stay plenty warm without the in-floor heat, but what needs more warmth overnight and on the coldest days is the air. This past year Tim purchased and installed a used wall heater which uses the hot water from our solar collector as its heat source. This has worked quite well to keep the greenhouse warm overnight most nights, and we have an electric space heater to add additional warmth on the coldest of nights, when it has been too cloudy to heat enough water with the sun. Tim has these all set on with thermostat sensors and computer programs that turn everything on and off as needed. Good to have a geeky guy around! We also no longer put up the insulation over the glazing each night, which was labor-intensive and not all that helpful.

BONUS!

As an additional source of heating, we have a unique situation. The greenhouse is built on the south side of our home, and includes a door to our crawlspace. Most of the crawlspace is backfilled with dirt, and the temperature remains quite even–not too hot, not to cool. Tim has added a duct (see at top of photo above) with a fan to blow the hot air from the greenhouse into the crawlspace during the day which warms up the crawlspace a bit. At night, the door to this crawlspace is left open, so the warm air stored there can circulate back into the greenhouse for added warmth. In the summer, by keeping the door to the crawlspace open the coolness from the crawlspace helps keep the greenhouse cooler. Just an added benefit of attaching the greenhouse to the house!

Here are photos of our former greenhouse, which served us well, but our new greenhouse is 10x better!

LATE AUGUST PROGRESS: 2017

August 28, 2017

by Laurie with No Comment Garden Greenhouse

It’s time to update the progress in the garden, which I have been putting off because:

I’m too busy working in the garden to spend time writing, and choosing & editing photos.
I’ve thought that what anyone wants to see is results. Results won’t fully be in until the end of the season.
It’s a big project and somewhat overwhelming.

But, I have several observations to share near the end of our first season of high-altitude gardening. Some things have gone well, others have not. I realize that even when I am a “seasoned” high-elevation gardener, every year will be different and will bring different results.

WEATHER

This summer, after some very hot days the latter part of June and early July, we have since had an extraordinary amount of rain and generally cooler weather. And I mean “extra-ordinary”; it has rained almost daily. We had 25 days with rain the month of July, and all but 4 days so far in August have had rain. We’ve had a total of 10.6” during the months June-August, which is a lot for our location. Last year we had 1.8” during that same time period. Some days are sunny and quite warm in the morning, then cooler and cloudy/rainy in the afternoon. Some days we’ve had close to 1” of rain in a day, occasionally with small hail. Other days are just a few spits. Needless to say, I have not had to water the garden much. This photo was taken just after a thunderstorm, showing the typical dark sky and that lush green pasture we have this year.

SHADE CLOTH

The garden beds are almost always covered with shade cloth. The sun is so intense at 9,000 feet, we felt it was important to provide protection. Think “sunscreen” for plants. One concern about the shade cloth would be, “can the pollinators get in?” Yes, the ends of each bed are open, and they should be able to get in and out easily. The birds certainly have figured that out! No worries about the plants getting enough rain, either. The rain still gets through and the hail does not. Some of the hail will sit on top, and as it melts, it drips through to the beds. The shade cloth has been a great addition, and the plants are certainly not suffering from lack of sunshine.

UNIQUE HIGH ELEVATION TIMING

To some extent, I don’t know if we’re “on track” regarding timing. I think that most things are maturing much more slowly than they would in a warmer climate. I’m not yet sure if things will ripen before the temperatures dive in September. This is a photo of our tomatoes today. I just noticed that these had begun to turn orange yesterday. As an example of our timing here, this is a Glacier tomato, with days to maturity listed as 55. This is my first tomato with any color, shown 74 days after transplanting outside. I was already picking ripe tomatoes at this time where we used to live, although the bulk of them didn’t ripen until September. The only winter squashes I have on the vines are roughly the size of a golfball. At this point, I’m not thinking they will mature before the frosts begin in September. Just about everything is a month behind here, which makes sense, as our last frost date is also a month behind. For the most part I have chosen varieties that should mature as quickly as possible.

PESTS

The only pests I have had any trouble with have been grubs, aphids, and a few cabbage worms. Not bad!

The grubs showed up in the soil in probably the thousands. As I was digging through one of the unplanted beds one day I began finding them. The more I dug the more I found. I counted as I removed them, and estimated 4-500 in the top 5-6” of just one bed. I threw them all in a bucket and fed them to the ducks a couple of handfuls at a time, and at least they liked them. Although I didn’t observe any obvious plant damage, I was concerned that all these grubs might become some kind of beetles that I wouldn’t want around (beetles that would lay eggs which would become more grubs next season and then more beetles). I wasn’t sure if they would eventually damage the veggies, or not. My best guess is that beetles laid their eggs in our pile of horse manure that had been aging for a couple of years—apparently they love that stuff, and I found that the remainder of that pile was also full of grubs. To get them under control I got some beneficial nematodes, and within a couple of weeks they were largely gone. There are still a few here and there, but they are no longer bothersome.

Just the other day I noticed a beetle buzzing by me, and remembered that during my grub research I had seen photos of a “Bumble Flower Beetle” that looked like this photo. I now think that the grubs may be these beetle larvae, and more beneficial than damaging. There were so many of the grubs, it’s probably just as well that they are under control, but it just may be that they never were that much of a threat.

Aphids have found us and have been eating lettuces, kale and spinach. Not too badly, but they are there and laying eggs. I have sprayed them intermittently with neem and insecticidal soap, which seem to help. I had some calendula planted in a couple of spots, which I removed because they had gotten too big for their locations. When I pulled them up, I discovered that they were covered with aphids, so they may have acted as a “trap” for them, keeping them away from the vegetables to some extent. Off to the compost pile.

The cabbage worms have been present, but not in too many numbers. The same spray has been helpful to keep them at bay. I found one on my corn the other day, but none over there since then.

GREENHOUSE PLANS

Our current project is building a greenhouse. I’ll add another post on that at a later date. Tim’s been working hard to plan and has begun to build our winter oasis. The greenhouse will be attached to the southern side of our house, under and out from the deck. It will have approximately 110 sq.ft. of bed space, and an area for starting seedlings. It will be heated with radiant heat in the concrete floor, and will have a pond inside for thermal storage and for fish–I’ll be able to use the fish’s water to water the plants. It should be enclosed (we think) in about 4-5 weeks, with the heating in the floor to come later . Therefore, I’m already starting some seedlings indoors that will be planted out as soon as I can. Wow! Can’t wait!

IT’S BEEN 74 DAYS: HOW ARE THE VEGETABLES DOING?

It is now 74 days after “last frost”, when most plants were planted outside, give or take a day or two.

The cold-hardy vegetables have all done very well up to this point (brassicas such as kale, cauliflower, mustard; lettuces, spinach, beets, radishes, onions). I’ve started a second batch of all of these to extend into the fall, with covered beds as needed.

Some other vegetables that I expected to do well haven’t met my expectations, such as peas & beans. The peas are there, but not in the numbers I had in our previous garden. The beans have lots of blossoms but very few beans.

The warm-season vegetables that I’m experimenting with are still questionable, such as corn, squashes, and tomatoes. Tomatoes have just begun to turn yellow and orange, the corn has ears that are small and don’t feel like they have much inside, the squashes are small and I doubt they will ripen in time.

Perennials in their first year of growth are (I think) slowly growing, as to be expected. These are asparagus, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

At the end of the summer I’ll post all my observations of everything I’ve planted, I’ll do a page for each vegetable or vegetable group to keep it a bit organized. Hopefully the information will help anyone interested.

Greenhouse!

November 7, 2011

by Laurie with No Comment Garden-Wellington Greenhouse

Greenhouse, It faces south.

The greenhouse is done! We finally have it all completed and planted, and are excited to see how well things will grow.

First, Tim put the hoops up, and side supports. We got some “woven poly” from Northern Greenhouse Supply, along with their poly-fastener, which worked quite well to stretch the poly across the hoops. These are great products, and Bob was very helpful answering questions. We received our order quickly, too.

Nice sliding door

After stretching the poly over the south side, we put some poly on the curved part of the side wall, still not sure what we would do for a door and the side by the wall of the house. We managed to get a free, double-paned sliding door, which worked out perfectly. It also has a screen door which we will add to it when we need the ventilation. We still need to put in some vents on the far wall, but will do that in time. Right now we don’t really think we need it. Soon we’ll also be setting up a fan, just to get the air moving a bit. We’ll probably run it each day for awhile.

6 bins for planting

We had a few challenges, such as the bins we are using as beds. We got some 350 gallon food-grade containers, cut them in half and put them on dollies so we can move them around a bit. The weight of the soil in them made them each sag toward one side, so we had to support them better on the bottom with plywood. This took extra time re-doing them before planting. These had been used for barbeque sauce. Even after cleaning, we still get an occasional whiff of the barbeque sauce. Our veggies just may be pre-sauced!

We also had some challenges determining what kind of soil to use. Some references suggested only using purchased potting soil, which we didn’t want to do. It would be a LOT of potting soil to buy. We winged it with a mixture of plain Colorado soil at the bottom, gradually mixing in some soil we dug out from one of our raised beds (well amended) complete with lots of earthworms, some peat and perlite and homemade compost. There’s a higher percentage of perlite and compost near the top of each bin. Hopefully this’ll do the trick.

Bin with salad greens

I started most things in the house previously, under grow lights. I wish I’d started more things sooner, but now I’ll know better what I should start and when I should start them. I’ve planted salad greens (lettuce, spinach, endive, mizuna), cilantro, beets, kohlrabi, leeks, scallions, garlic, swiss chard, kale, peas, napa cabbage, rutabagas and a few carrots. All of these things should do well in cooler weather.

Yesterday afternoon it was 80 degrees in there, while about 50-60 outside. The

6 bins for planting

humidity inside is running around 50-60%, much more humid than outside most of the time. This morning it was about 20 degrees outside, and over 40 in the greenhouse. The soil temperature has been running around 60 degrees.

My potting bench & work area is neatly against the wall, and this is also where we keep the duck feed and get it ready to take out. For the winter, we’re taking their water out each day in a bucket, since we can’t keep the well water hose out there in freezing temps.

As you can see, it’s a pretty dandy setup!

Greenhouse Construction Has Begun

October 9, 2011

by Laurie with No Comment Garden-Wellington Greenhouse

Tim has begun to work on our greenhouse, which we will use for growing a few things in late fall/early winter, and then in late winter/early spring. We’ll also use it for hardening off seedlings before planting them outside. It faces the south, so gets plenty of light and warmth in the afternoons.

We’re making lots of plans, reading books and finding websites with greenhouse information. I’ve begun starting a few seedlings in the house, which will be planted in large planters in the greenhouse. Lettuce, spinach, endive, kale, beets, kohlrabi, some leeks and scallions are already started, and I’ll be getting some seeds for a few other cold-tolerant items. I’m also planting some of these things in the cold frame. I expect the cold frame things to be used first, then move on to the things that will be in the greenhouse. Then I’ll start another cold frame in the spring. I’m still starting the seedlings in the house under lights, as I have good success with that method using the soil blocks.

Meanwhile, it’s getting pretty cold overnight, so I’m harvesting what I need to before it’s too late. I picked off all near-ripe tomatoes and gave them to a friend on Friday, cut off all basil near the root, washed it up last night and will dry/freeze/make pesto today. The peppers are under the cold frame, and hopefully some of what’s there will still ripen. I will probably pick green tomatoes, too, and do something with those. I need to dig up potatoes one of these days, and discover how well they did. I’m particularly anxious to see if the sweet potatoes grew! I’m not sure our season is long enough for them, and I got them started later than I’d hoped. The slips I started in the house took longer to sprout than expected.