Greenhouse Update

We decided to do a little bit of work on the greenhouse this past weekend - and Sunday the weather Gods were nice enough to give us a break in rain. Although humid, and the ground muddy, Nate did an amazing job working on getting the greenhouse ready for construction. See my previous blog post for the first greenhouse update (http://stephmixson.blogspot.com/2014/08/designing-greenhouse-and-update-on.html).

Working on the greenhouse - Deacon is overseeing

The metal poles that will serve as the structural grounding were less than stable after removing the fabric from when it was a pool, as well as removing one section that will serve as the doorway of the greenhouse. Nate went around and dug all of the pole bases into the ground several inches. He then placed an entire ring of stones on the outside, which has helped tremendously with the stability. The stones came from the turtle pond (sad day - the pond has been somewhat dismantled; don't worry - the turtles have been safely moved to an aquarium indoors). Once a plastic layer is on top of the poles and the edges held snugly under the stones, everything should be held in place.

Buried poles and stones lining the greenhouse

Nate spreading gravel

He then shoveled a layer of gravel from part of the pathway - however it's very muddy. Maybe after several rinsings (and it has been raining quite a lot here) it should be a good surface for walking as well as providing excess drainage, which will be good for the raised gardens.

Future steps include finishing the raised gardens - design-wise I have decided that we will need 6 total, which leaves space for a workbench. Two of these gardens have been built, just need to place inside the structure on top of the gravel and fill with the 1:1:1 mixture of soil (http://stephmixson.blogspot.com/2014/04/gardening-101.html). Another two I want Nate to build tiered so that the back half is taller than the front - this should work well for veggies like onions, carrots, and potatoes. I have been growing seedlings in the AeroGarden (http://stephmixson.blogspot.com/2014/07/starter-seeds.html) for only two weeks now and already the corn, okra, squash (yes - I am trying again despite my earlier failure), and broccoli have been transplanted into larger pots (not too large as they are still seedlings) and placed to the sides of the AeroGarden. Once the raised gardens are ready for planting I plan to put these seedlings into the greenhouse! In addition to all of this, as if we don't have enough going on already, we want to have a round pond, possibly about 4 ft tall, in the center of the greenhouse. The pond will help with heat retention - you can see the circle left in the middle in the photograph. 

A hard day's work!

The dome and insulation still needs to be completed, but we have until October or so before we need that part to be completed. Hopefully having gardens planted won't get in the way of piecing the greenhouse together. The geodesic dome is 8 ft tall, which, when placed on top of the current framework, will make the entire structure about 12 ft tall. I will give an update later on as we continue on this project!