Blink, and a month flies past.
How is it that, when we last spoke of the garden, the rain was drowning out our attempts at getting the greenhouse up and running, we had just crossed the threshold from our Spring of Deception into our Third Winter, and the plans for our Spring Equinox party had just begun?
Now, we have firmly crossed over into The Pollening, as evidenced by my itchy eyes and daily nose bleeds, our greenhouse is complete, as are a bunch of other small, but equally important gardening tasks. Care to take a gander?
Since the last diary entry, Arlen and I managed to get the entire greenhouse foundation laid out and glued together. We went back and forth for a long time about what to use for the inner flooring, in the end re-using the concrete blocks I had pulled up from our wedding dance floor. It felt like such a waste not to re-purpose them in some way, especially after Arlen had spent many a June day crafting them way back in 2020.
As you can see, the mud is still mudding, and we opted not to lay a weed fabric or gravel base. This is primarily because, on any other day, the ground beneath our feet is super compacted/ immobile. In fact, when we laid our original dance floor, it hardly shifted or sank into the ground, even after 5 years of use. So we felt safe in our decision of just working with the ground as is and not adding more amendments (or work). Check back in another 5 years to see if that was the right decision.
With the flooring laid and the base put together, it was time to break open the greenhouse and get it set up! This part was probably the easiest bit of our entire process. In fact, we managed to get the greenhouse standing and fully assembled in just a few hours! The tricky part came after, when we went to secure the greenhouse to the concrete paver base. It wasn't as simple as screwing the base of the metal frame into the blocks. Oh no. Whoever had designed this greenhouse had created a sort of lip all around the metal frame, so we had to secure the base to the frame with a bunch of L-brackets. And soon as we had a lot of impending wind coming our way.
I don't have any photos of the L-brackets, but this is the greenhouse right after it was constructed. It may look as if it is sitting on only one layer of concrete blocks, but there is another layer, sunk deeper into the ground beneath the visible one. They are all glued together, that way, if anything tries to sink, at least the entire base will sink somewhat evenly.
With the greenhouse secured against the wind and caulked around the inside to keep it as warm and toasty as possible, it was now time to build some shelving for plants to live. And because we were up against the clock, I enlisted Arlen's help for that particular endeavor.
For the next several weekends leading up to our Spring Equinox party, Arlen would join me outside, he to build the shelves and me to get the rest of our *very messy* garden in order. Some of the things we worked on over the course of 4 weeks included:
- Staining and cutting the inner greenhouse shelves
- Filling in the gas around the greenhouse with well-draining pea-gravel
- Disassembling my first mini-greenhouse attempt
- Breaking down all of the brush and fallen tree limbs and organizing them into neat little piles
- Building a space in which to house all those limbs and brush
- Crafting a new fire-pit area
- Burning and tung-oiling the final two garden beds for our backyard garden
- Moving the apple trees from the front to the back yard and the blueberry bushes from the side to the back yard
- Ordering 5 cubic yards of soil and then transporting that soil all around the garden
- Snagging bags and bags of leaf + leaf mold from my dear friend's yard to use as mulch in our garden beds
And likely so much more that I am already forgetting. It's been a busy month, to say the least, and of course, I've only gotten a handful of pictures to share because I always forget to take photos while knee-deep in the process of it all.
Arlen working out exactly how to fit everything in to the greenhouse and in which order things need to be assembled.
The shelves up and already being put to use to hold some elderberry cuttings and our newest lemon tree!
In case you were curious what 5 cubic yards of soil looks like all at once. It's a pretty large pile, but I managed to get it all sorted in just a week or two.
The beginning of us mapping out our new fire-pit area, and in the background, you will find the very low-tech solution I devised to hold all the wood and brush from around the yard. This probably took me the longest time to get sorted. We had so many branches!
And there you have it! We have spent so much of this past month working outside. My body is sore all over and in need of a much deserved break. Especially my left foot as I seem to have overworked it and am now prone to limping around.
But of course, there is also still SO much more to be done, especially as summer is only a few months away. But with the greenhouse built and the shelves up, I think the time for starting seedlings is near. How exciting, right?
I promise to check back in soon and share even more of how are garden is evolving. Maybe by then, things will be growing in abundance!