Homemade Greenhouse!

Spent yesterday in Marshfield helping out my farmer friend.

A project that should had been started months ago instead of waiting for the cold weather to arrive.

The plan is for this to be his new temporary greenhouse.  This will allow him to winter his many, many plants, of which is has a great assortment.  Several more posts need to be set, then the support joists but most of the manual labor aspects of the project are done.  We simply ran out of daylight.

That's a woodstove under the brown tarp and his anticipated source of heat once covered.

Another trip will be in order once the 100' roll of plastic arrives, which promises to be quite a challenge to open, fold in half and put in place.

Baby It's Cold Outside...

This is my Farmer Friends greenhouse. Looks kinda lonely sitting there all by itself. She's still holding up just fine and has made it through the recent hurricane and wind storms without issues. However, that being said, my friend is definitely pushing his luck and keeping his fingers crossed too that she makes it through this winter. You see we covered her back in 2006 (I think) but with only 4-year plastic. The saving grace and what's making the difference is that we double it, so there are two layers. Although it still looks fine there are some holes in the outer layer and it doesn't hold the heat nearly as well as it should be. He's been struggling but has been able to keep the temperature inside above freezing, thus keeping the plants inside alive.



To help accomplish this he purchased a second wood stove, pictured below. So, he now has two wood stoves up and running now; one at each end of the greenhouse. Sounds warm and cozy but in reality it's anything but - the new stove runs about 5-hours before it needs to be filled again, so it needs constant attention. It's difficult to keep a 60' long x 12' wide x 10' tall greenhouse toasty with only wood stoves and without a lot of effort.



I just hope that Mother Nature is kind this winter, so that he makes it to Spring without incident and without taxing him too much. After all, he's no sping chicken...

Raising a Greenhouse

Sunday, September 24th, 2006 was the day...

Well, we didn't actually raise the greenhouse, not this past weekend anyway, we finally covered it (again)!

When we first installed the greenhouse back in 1998 or 1999, we covered it with two layers of 6mil plastic. This was a four year plastic that happened to last almost six years - I guess because we doubled it. However, the New England weather took it's toll - of course the wild turkeys that decided to roost on the ridge didn't help either but rather helped it's demise along by sinking their claws through the plastic to grip the ridge bar. Covering it back then was a challenge and I was younger and a tad bit lighter, svelte, but let's not get into specifics and waist sizes...

The greenhouse has sat uncovered now for a couple years, not being used. All the 'stuff' that was inside still sitting where it was when it was covered, only now it's ruined and useless. The goal now is to get the ends built, the woodstove installed, clean ALL that 'stuff' out , get the plants in before the first New England frost and get the greenhouse back up and running.

How bout some specs on this here greenhouse:
48' long
30' wide
12' floor to ridge

We purchased a new 100' roll of 6mil plastic and yes, it's quite heavy. Once again we rolled it out (on the neighbors lawn) and cut it in half - it went on it two pieces. Once on, the ends needed to be secured. Now this might sound failrly straight forward, however, there are approximately 50 bolts that need to installed on each end. The problem here is that each bolt needs to cut through 2 layers of plastic to get a grip on the threads. The bolts do not have points on the end but rather they're flat, also short. Anyway, we got it done despite it being on the windy side too and it only took about 5 hours.

At one point this entire greenhouse was full of beautiful flowers with a sea of colors. I can't tell you how satisfying it is to finally see it covered and on the road to being used again. The anticipation will be well worth waiting for!

Here are ‘before and after’ pictures:

Before:


After: