I have been busy during quarantine preparing the greenhouse for spring planting. I have bags and bags of leaves from my work to use as mulch. My son’s old bed frame as a nice trellis area and a drive to get it done.
First I had to dig a trench under the wood frame for the greenhouse and fill it with rocks. I got to thinking that having planting beds against the frame would really speed up rotting of the greenhouse. After brainstorming several solutions with the people at permies.com I decided the easiest, and probably most effective, would be trenching and filling with rock, making a french drain of sorts under the greenhouse frame.
Then I broad forked the in ground greenhouse beds. Our ground is hard clay and this wasn’t easy! Then the kids assisted me in spreading mulch.
Then I put out the giant pots. I intend to use these to plant things the ground squirrels can’t resist eating. These are not filled yet but I have started the process by putting a bunch of dead branches in the bottom of the pots. I will fill them with compost as soon as I can get some.
I hung some pots up around the walls for storage and because I love the look. Added solar lights, which aren’t super bright at night but work well enough and I do enjoy the look of the lights.
I intend to make a potting bench on the right side of the back wall. I have water barrels coming and am going to wait for them before I build the bench. All in all I am excited to start planting!
I finally installed all of the windows and was ready to start sheet metaling the rest of the structure. It was slow going as I could not work in the wind and yet again, I was pregnant.
On a nice day I recruited my child slave labor to clean the windows. It was a messy job, cleaning the kids up afterward was just as much work.
Still. my children did a good job cleaning all the years of grime off of those windows and the greenhouse looks very nice clean.
Now is the tricky part, sheet metal. Wyoming is WINDY. I was only able to do this in bits and pieces as I waited for periods without wind. I felt like it took forever, but in reality it was probably just a few weeks.
Fully enclosed in metal I only had the finish work to do. I debated the molding portion of this project for awhile before deciding I would use fence pickets. They were the perfect size, required no cutting width wise, just length.
I should probably stain/paint or somehow otherwise seal the wood pickets to prevent damage. I may get around to that eventually, or I may not and regret it years later. Who knows.
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.
Building things is messy!
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.
laying windows out int he square framea wall ready to get lifted into place.
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.
Son loved using the staple gun
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.
