For the price, it's actually a pretty good one. During the first few days after we put it up, we kept checking the temperature inside to see how it fluctuates during the day, just to get an idea of whether or not it would be warm enough. And, oh yes, it does get it warm in there! And humid!
So yesterday, we went a little farther in getting it ready for planting. Here Chuck is mixing up some new dirt to put into the planter pots:
This year, we decided to try these "Smart Pots" after Chuck heard about them:
They are made of some kind of fabric that's supposed to absorb heat and also let the roots grow freely. My initial intention was to have one pot for each tomato, zucchini, and cucumber plant. But right now I have 10 tomato, 3 zucchini, and 3 cucumber plants started, and at $7 for each Smart Pot, it would be expensive to use only those for these plants. So we came up with another alternative:
We put a garden bed inside the greenhouse. The greenhouse is 10' x 10', and the garden bed is 4' x 8', so that gives me room on either side of it to line the sides of the greenhouse with pots if I still want to use them. This year we are starting with 4 Smart Pots just to try them out. So I'm going to use one for tomatoes, one for zucchini, and one for cucumbers, and the last one for corn. Then I will plant the rest of the tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and maybe some corn in the bed, and that way I'll be able to see if there's any difference as to what growing method works best. The bed will also provide me a little more room to start more seeds in there if I want to. I am just waiting until late May to make sure it'll stay warm enough there at night cuz we don't have a heater in there. Maybe next year we'll have one if this year proves that we need one. The plants that you see there on the left are the ones that I keep hauling out there from my windowsill every day when I know it will be warm enough in there for them. So far they seem to really like being out there, but every so often I have to go out there and check to make sure they aren't getting burned up. So far it's been working to partially keep the door unzipped and/or open up the window flap if it gets too hot in there. By the way, I get a sentimental feeling every time I go into the greenhouse because Chuck mixed some fertilizer into the dirt and it smells like a barnyard in there!! AAAHHHHHHHhhhhhh..............! I love the smell of cow manure!!!
While Chuck was mixing dirt together, I decided to try planting some of my "cold weather" seeds.
On my window sill, the only "cold weather" plant that I already started was a lettuce plant.
It looks pretty lonely, doesn't it?
The other veggies that are supposed to be able to tolerate frost are radishes and spinach, so I went ahead and planted a few seeds. But I didn't plant a whole row because I wanted to have a "continual harvest" - planting a few seeds every few weeks or so will give you a continual harvest instead of a whole bunch all at once. Since I'm the only one who enjoys radishes, I thought this would be a good idea. Plus, if for some reason the seeds don't sprout on account of being too cold, then at least I didn't waste a whole row of seeds. By the way, I saw this idea on Pinterest: to write the vegetable name on a plastic utensil and stick in the bed. Why didn't I think of that!!?
Kiska came out to join in what she apparently thought was "much ado", but for some reason she was being really skittish and kept running back into the house every time she felt spooked about something, like an airplane flying overhead, or maybe Chuck was getting violent with his shovel in the dirt, or the zipper on the greenhouse door was too loud, etc., I don't know, but she must've been in and out of the house a million times.
Here is how my rhubarb and chives are doing right now. Coming along just fine!!
I've already snipped off some chives twice to use in my cooking. I won't have to buy any green onions now for awhile. I know, my flower garden looks terrible. One of these days I will rake all those dead leaves out. I always like to try and get that job done before the spiders get too prevalent.
So far, we haven't seen any moose in the neighborhood, and that's a good thing. Maybe this year we will actually get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Now........I wonder how our blueberries at the cabin are doing. We tried to go to the cabin this weekend, but instead of bringing the side-by-side, we brought the truck (because we were hauling Justin's old bed to the cabin to put in the loft). Halfway through the backroads we ran into a deep squishy mud hole that had "TRAP" written all over it. So Chuck tried to get past it by another way that ran adjacent to it. That one didn't look AS BAD, but I kept telling him "don't do it, don't do it, don't do it". He attempted it anyway, only with not enough "oomph", and of course we stalled in the middle of it, and the tires were happily spinning, yet we did not continue moving forward. He managed to back us out of it, but he wanted to try it again. Then it started POURING RAIN. I told him, "the rain is only gonna make that mud hole softer and squishier. I would rather turn around and go home then dig us out of a mud pit in the POURING RAIN!". He still thought about it for a few minutes cuz he hated the idea of turning around and going back home. But thankfully, he listened to me, which proves there's a first time for everything.
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