garden – Peacock Orchard

Building a greenhouse from old windows

I have been collecting windows for some time with the intention of building a greenhouse out of them. I have all the old wood windows from my office, all the windows from our house and the stray window that was given to me by this person or that person. They have all been sitting in our lean-to being broken upon occasion by activity around them. I really needed to get this greenhouse going.

Last year I was given metal roofing and that was the final piece in my greenhouse puzzle. I had always intended to build the greenhouse in a lean-to style. One wall full windows while the opposite wall was solid. Now I had all the supplies I needed (- the wood for framing it all in).

We had a lot of debate about location. I needed it to be close to a water source which led to problems as all the water sources are close to large buildings which would block the sun. I also needed to access the greenhouse fairly easily.

So, the greenhouse is in the yard. 8 feet wide, 24 feet long and 8 feet tall. The greenhouse comes in 4 feet under the county requirement for a permit. Wohoo!

Our wonderful family supplied me with gift cards to Home Depot. I calculated how much wood I needed and off we went to purchase it. Thankfully husband was with me as I had left out the need for cement to keep the entire thing from blowing over.

I could only work on the greenhouse nights and weekends so a lot of digging and planning was done in the dark.

Husband dug all the holes for the posts. Then I realized we miscalculated them and all of them had to be re-dug. We did them one hole at a time, erecting the walls in between to make sure the greenhouse was square and the posts were in the proper place. I am terrible at measuring things so it was important to do one wall at a time for this.

The back walls are simple frames. Nothing fancy. Then I made boxes out of 4 2×4’s for the sides and front walls. I laid them on the ground and began placing the windows and doors in them and framing around them. Some of the windows needed screwed in before the walls could be erected and put in place. Others could easily be stapled in after putting the walls in place. Husband had to help me a lot. Building a heavy window greenhouse while halfway through pregnancy is quite a strain.

We kept the stairs from the front of our house. I always intended to use them as greenhouse shelving. I think they are perfect!

Roofing and siding is going to take quite awhile. It’s been windy here lately and moving metal sheeting in the wind is just a really bad/dangerous idea.

The kids bopped in and out to help here and there through the process. They enjoyed digging for about 5 mins. They like using the tape measure. Daughter likes acting as building foreman and informing me how disappointed she is in the size. Son loved using the staple gun.

I’ll be sure to post again when the entire thing is completed.

PawPaws round 3, 4? Too many attempts

The weather here has been crazy! I thought for sure that storm would hit us but it missed us, thank goodness. Still lost power for about 30 minutes.

I have been determined to grow pawpaws. So determined that I think this might be my 4th attempt in a new location. I’ve had some success in the kraters but they get eaten back every year and eventually die. Near the pond was nice but they were squished and eaten by farm animals.

So, onward to location 4. The newly transformed orchard garden. The barn shades a portion of the area for quite a bit of the day. That is where i planted these pawpaws.

I had some troubles with this order. The delivery was a rough on a couple of the trees. Branch breaking rough. I planted them anyway but thought they would die. At the very least they look pathetic. Enjoy my children holding the damaged trees for documentation.

I received my trees from One Green World. I generally love all the things I order from them. In fact most of the living orchard trees are from them. I ordered the pawpaw tree bundle which was a sale of 4 different trees. I should have written down what the tags say because at the computer right now I can’t remember what they are to save my life. I know they didn’t have 2 of the varieties in the bundle and I told them to just send me whatever they had.

I have really long grass in this area as I haven’t planted anything else here because of the shade. The grass has been fantastic actually. It insulates the pawpaws from the mornings scorching sun and has kept them all looking well. There is some insect damage, more on some than others, but they’re looking good so far.

Vegetation in general is very tall this year. Can you see my daughters head walking back to the house?

New Kraters First Snow

Snow blows. At least around here. I was unsure about how the rest of the property would handle being kratered. The current kraters are on a slight slope between two swales. They have a nice line of bushes blocking the wind. They’ve been doing well. Will all the property do this well? I just wasn’t sure.

It’s snowed and the kraters filled up with snow just fine. What a relief!

I’m excited to see how the seeds sprout and things progress come spring.

For now, it’s all good.

Krater Completion, mostly

What a growing season this has been. Dry, windy, hot, miserable. On top of that we had major tractor problems. Still kind of do. I wasn’t able to put the finishing touches on the completed Kraters as the battery is dead on the excavator AGAIN. Uh oh, Husband hadn’t been told of that before this post. Sorry Babe. Battery is going to need replaced big time. Lots of love!

My goal was 12 kraters. I completed 4. I won’t be planting out a few hundred trees next year now. Instead I have modified my plans to begin our graft nursery. I was able to set that space up sufficiently, except the fence, which we simply need to put up real quick.

Back to the kraters. They seem all right. They have been dug, terraced, top soiled and planted. What else could a girl hope to do with all that has been going on. Enjoy a few action shots.

Look at these poor guard dogs. They wander over to check their charges and get mauled with cuddles. It’s a tough life for sure!

It appears I engage in child krater terracing labor. To be fair, the child really likes the labor.

Top soil was dumped on and needed moved around.

Throwing out our hand collected seeds.

Raking the seeds in.

Digging Kraters- What to do with all that dirt

A big factor to consider when doing dramatic earth works is what you are going to do with all of the dirt, wood, etc you create by doing it. If you are clearing trees to create a silvapasture, do you have a plan for those cleared? Hugukulture beds to create? When digging 35 acres worth of kraters around three feet deep that is a lot of dirt excavated out. What can you do with so much dirt?

That largely depends on the situation you are in and what kind of dirt you are excavating out. We have various types of earth being excavated from our kraters at the moment and three methods of dealing with them.

The black earth we excavate out is piled up and moved to the area where our natural swimming pond is being made as it is a great water holding clay. We appear to have more of this clay than I expected so perhaps we’ll be building a few more ponds in the future.

The gravel we excavate out is piled up and moved to our road and drive way which are in deplorable condition. I don’t know if we’ll ever dig up enough of this to fill our need.

Everything else is piled in one big pile and moved to our dam site. We have been building up the dam for awhile now but it has a long way to go before it will be sufficient to hold the amount of water we desire.

The top soil is scraped off before hand and piled up to be put back into the krater when excavation is complete.

I hope this look into our earth moving practices helps.

Krater Digging 2016

Will be done by small hands, smaller shovels and tiny dump trucks!

I kid. I’ve begun Krater digging with the usual meth0d, front bucket of our Kubota tractor. This land is a bit more special though. It is what I call “dead” land. Land so over grazed and compacted that practically nothing will grow on it.

Lots of bare spots and tiny plants here. Most of our property is this way with few exceptions.

This is one of those exceptions. So lovely!

I removed the top soil with the bucket but I was completely unable to do any more than that. I have four Kraters mapped out with plans for a full 10 at the least.

As you can tell it’s a few inches deed at the moment. I piled the top soil in a communal pile in the middle for re-application later on.

As you can tell the clay here is thick and HARD. Rock hard.

This would have been a particularity good photo example of that except every time I tried to get a picture our new puppy would run in the way. So, enjoy the puppy pic!

I am sure the excavator will be able to dig this mess up. Unfortunately the battery is dead. It’s in the process of charging. Eventually I’ll be able to get out there and dig my required Kraters.