GARDEN & GREENHOUSE

First published 11-20-11 in my blog Postcards from the Heartland.

IT'S A DIRTY JOB...
but somebody has to do it!

GREENHOUSE CLEANUP

 Thanks, honey!

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First published 11-20-11 in my blog Postcards from the Heartland.

A GREENHOUSE IN THE MAKING

After thirty some years of gardening, we finally have a greenhouse. Oh, it's a rather inexpensive one, since we're not sure what we're doing. But it should last long enough for us to see if greenhouse gardening is for us.

We bought "Greenhouse in a Box" from Sears. It's supposed to be easy to erect. It wasn't. Of course, being made in China (as most things seem to be these days), the directions were about as clear as mud. But somehow we muddled through and finally had ourselves a nice little 10'x20' greenhouse.

The box arrived in July, and my husband was gung-ho to get it up. He'd already started tomatoes, peppers, onions, salad greens, brussels sprouts, broccoli, Swiss chard, potatoes, marigolds and mums in pots and tubs, but the protection of the greenhouse wouldn't be needed until the cooler weather of fall set in.

So we worked on it, bit by bit over the summer. And what a blazing hot summer we had! I helped out when needed, but I'd only work in the relative cool of the morning, before the sun rose up over the woods on the east end of our little meadow.

Eventually the weather cooled and we moved the plants inside. Of course, by then they had picked up some garden pests. I had to keep pulling off tomato hornworms and cabbage worms until the moths that produced them had ceased to lay eggs.  And the mustard greens had aphids. But I pulled up all the mustard greens, and the aphids didn't seem to have affected anything else. Our worst pests, though, were moles tunneling all around and underneath the greenhouse.

Everything grew lush as a jungle inside our little plastic-covered hut. I wish I had taken a picture of it in all its full-grown glory.  We know now that we should have started the tomatoes at least a month earlier, in June, because we only had three ripe, cherry tomatoes.  But we enjoyed salads every day this fall. And we harvested a few very nice potatoes. There's a bit of a learning curve to greenhouse gardening, and we've noted changes to make next year.

The greenhouse has withstood the wind well, so far. We've enjoyed a very mild autumn, but sooner or later we knew it would be too cold for the plants. This week it finally got cold enough to do damage. The tomatoes and pepper plants bit the dust. The salad greens and onions are still hanging in there though, and there are little heads forming on the broccoli.

We don't know if we'll be able to keep snow off of it this winter, or if we'll need to remove the plastic cover til spring. I'm kind of hoping it'll make a nice warm place for me to sit outside this winter, soak up the sunshine, and read.

My only question at this point is: after all these years, why did we wait so long to try a greenhouse?

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First published 11-22-11 in my blog Postcards from the Heartland.

GOODBYE, TOMATOES!

Well, it looks like the cold weather finally zapped our tomato and pepper plants in the greenhouse. It's a shame --- they were such strong, healthy plants.

But we're still getting great salad greens and onions. And we had the most delicious mashed potatoes the other night from Yukon Gold spuds grown in tubs.

Life is good!