Well, Need to get the doors done. I could have just screwed them together, but since I’ve got this fancy schmancy square hole puncher thought I’d use it to make some mortise and tenon joints.
The faster I get these done, the faster I can finish the green house!
Well, it’s a workday, so had to work, but took a little time to make a little more progress.
One of the things I was trying to figure out was how to reuse the roof vents. The old green house had an aluminum extrusion along the ridge. Part of it’s function was to hold the poly carb panels in place.
So here is the peak extrusion. The top part is what clamps the roof panels in place, and acts as a hinge for the roof vents. What I need to do is get rid of the bottom part so I can screw that right onto my wooden roof beam.
Probably lots of ways I could have done it. The table saw just didn’t feel right, as there’s really no good way safely move the material through the blade.
Didn’t want to use my woodworking bandsaw due to the metal shavings, and even though I know I can, didn’t want to potentially damage a woodworking blade.
So I pulled out my little hand held metal bandsaw and clamped it up vertical. Wasted a couple of pieces figuring out the best way to make the cut, but got it down. There were extra pieces because the corners of the greenhouse used the same extrusion.
Finished product. This should work well. I’ll put some flashing down on the ridge and then screw this on top.
Roof is all built up, added some supports to keep the sides from racking.
This thing is rock solid right now. I can’t budge it at all, so it should hold up to the winds.
Next up is build the doors and the roof vents. Once those are built up, all I have to do is put the polycarb panels on. Very close. Really liking the extra vertical room this gives me on the inside as well.
Well, It was fun while it lasted. A couple of years ago we bought a little greenhouse package from Costco. It seemed nice, had some clear polycarbonate panels, which I thought would be nice since you could see out of them. Well, after a few years, that green house should a few drawbacks.
First, it was kind of leaky, airwise, and was not really easy to seal up to keep the drafts out. To be honest, It was pretty well engineered and I’m amazed it stayed up in the winds we get out here. I know that sucker had put up with over 60 mph winds in the past.
Here’s what it looked like to start with. It was fantastic. Clear windows, everything looked great. It worked pretty well and I have to admit I have enjoyed using it. If I knew then what I know now though, I would not have bought it.
Fast forward a couple years and the roof has held up well, but the clear poly carb side walls just could not take the beating from the wind and the sun out here. They have gone hazy and brittle. If you touch them, they just fall apart. You can literally just poke your finger right through them.
The unfortunate thing is that they just are not repairable. I can’t replace them with something else. So I’m pretty much faced with the only option being to tear down the green house and completely rebuild.
So, Why not. No big deal. I bought some 2’x6′ twin wall polycarb panels similar to what was on the roof. I figure if they lasted, why not by some more like that. Plus the twin wall poly carb has at least a little bit of insulation value.
It took about 2 hours to tear down the old greenhouse. Here’s whats left.
And I made some progress on the replacement. Got three walls framed in. Tomorrow I’m hoping to get the rest of it framed up and maybe get the panels on the walls in place.
The nice thing is I was able to take advantage of all the prep work I had previously done and reuse the same base and footprint. The 4×4 foundation is anchored into the ground with concrete piers and with the 2×4 construction should prove to be pretty sturdy.
More posts to come as I continue on with the project.
Well, maybe not a lifetime supply, but what I did today should last quite a while.
I’ve been listening to the local gardening show on the radio on saturday mornings for quite a while, and on Saturday they were talking about this supercharged compost tea they were making and selling by the 1/2 gallon. Well, Screw that, I’ve got too many plants to worry about getting compost tea by the gallon or half gallon, and I’ve made it before. I have a little aquarium bubbler and a trash can I’ve used to make it, but I just hadn’t in quite a while.
So I went to the store (Rail City Garden Center, down in Sparks) and after a little searching with the staff, we found the ‘recipe’ and where they had all the ingredients stashed. The thing that escaped me was that the recipe yielded 300 gallons of compost tea. I glossed over that and just bought the (relatively expensive) ingredients in the smallest quantities they had.
I got home and as I started to figure out, even these small quantities of ingredients will produce pretty large quantities of compost tea. So although I may have spent a lot on some of these ingredients, the others should last me a good long while and make a lot of compost tea. Way more than the 300 gallons specified on the recipe.
Here are the original recipes, for 300 gallons and 55 gallons.
Here’s my version of the recipe converted down to 10 gallons worth. Use the tablespoons and cups, based on whatever is easier for you to measure.
Here’s the ingredients I bought. I’m not even going to tell how much this cost. I missed one, the humus, but I figure there’s enough other ‘good’ stuff in there it won’t make that much of a difference. I’ll pick it up next time.
Here I tested out the bubbler to make sure it worked, and the compost brewing away with the first 6 ingredients.
After this bubbles away tonight, I’ll add the next few ingredients and give all the plants in the garden a good feeding tomorrow.
Stay tuned to see how it works. I’m really hoping it gives my Carolina Reapers a little boost of growth!
So, The whole square foot gardening method is very popular. I really like the idea of it and gave it a shot last year. For whatever reason, We just found the 12″ squares were a little small for our liking. So we made ours just a little bit bigger, and that’s why it’s called 1.5′ Squared gardening, or 2.25 square.
Anyhow, putting in drip irrigation in these things can be a little challenging, so I thought, why not make the grids do the watering? So I’ve made some out of PVC tubing and fittings and drilled 1/16″ holes in the tubes. to let the water out.
I’m no hydraulic engineer, but it works pretty good. With the water running full blast, all the holes have just enough pressure to squirt out a few inches, but not under so much pressure to be damaging. A minute or two of running does a great job of evenly watering the whole bed right at ground level.
Step 1: Cut the tubes
Cut out 45 sections of 1/2″ PVC tube 14″ long. Why 14″? Well It worked out just right in my 4’x8′ raised beds with a little extra room.
Step 2: Mark a Guide Line
Mark a straight line on each of the cut pieces. We will be using this as a guide when we drill the holes to make sure they are all lined up right.
Step 3: Drill baby Drill!
Time to drill some holes. Here’s where it gets tricky, 18 of these will get holes on only one side, 27 will get holes drilled all the way through. I made a mark on 18 of them to let me know they should only get drilled on on side.
I used a v-block on my drill press to make sure that I drilled right in the center of the tubes,
So, Go ahead and drill the holes 1/2 through on 18, and all the way through on the remaining 27. Make sure you keep them separate!
Step 4: Get your parts together
You’ll need 4 1/2″ pvc 90’s, 10 1/2″ pvc crosses, 1 1/2″ slip fit pvc Tees, and 1 1/2″ Tee with a fip fitting on the tee, and slip on the sides.
You’ll definitely want to have gloves on when working with PVC Primer and Cement. It’s messy stuff, so make sure to do it somewhere you can get messy.
Go ahead and prime all your tube pieces and connectors.
It doesn’t hurt to give everthing a blast with the air hose to get any little bits of plastic that could clog your holes.
Step 5: Glue it up.
There’s no way to get around it. This is tedious, and you need to make sure you get it right. PVC glue is unforgiving after it sets. Make sure to put plenty of glue on both sides of the piece to make sure you have time to twist the tubes so the holes line up the right way.
Also make sure that you put the parts together right. The pieces with the holes on only one side go around the outside with the holes pointing in..
One tip is to use a flat surface when starting to make sure you get the fittings lined up parallel to each other.
I don’t have any other tips other than take your time, think about what type of tube goes where and make sure you get the holes pointing the right way.
Step 6: Protect it!
I like to put a coat of brown spray paint on it to protect the pvc from the sun and to make it blend in to the garden a bit better.
And that’s about it.
If you made it this far, here’s a little video showing how it works. Please ignore the artichokes, they were badly mistreated by me and should have been in the ground a while ago.
So, I picked a darn windy day to get the plants in the garden. They were all looking really nice in the green house. They were comfy looking and growing big! Now, I’ve got them in the ground, and well, they look a little beat up from the wind. It should calm down soon, and we’ll have a nice 50+ degree night, so hopefully they’ll perk up soon.
Still have a little more irrigation work to do, and there are some more plants that need to get out there, as well as some herbs and such. But making some progress.
I think I need to trim these guys back a little bit. Cascade on the left, Goldings in the middle, Nugget at the far end.
Really hope to get some hops out of these guys this year.
Just a little garden update. Seedlings are doing quite well in the greenhouse.
Historically, June 15 was last frost date for the Reno Area. The guy at the nursery is saying “Go ahead and plant”, but I think that’s just because he likes to sell new plants to people that roll the dice and plant early.
I’ve got a greenhouse, So I’m just going to keep repotting these guys and keeping them safe for at least another few weeks.
Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Cukes and Zukes
Some of my hot peppers. Some carolina Reapers in there.
Herbs.
My koi and goldfish
So, After the last several years of gardening out here, we’ve had our boom years and bust years. Last year was a bust. A long winter, short spring made things rather hard to deal with.
So we are putting in a green house.
I started on the foundation today. Hope to get it all done by the end of february and get some seeds started. In theory, we can have herbs all year long. That should be nice!.