Good morning! We have been home from our Virginia trip for five days. We had a wonderful time and, as always, can't wait to go back! Those two little guys are very entertaining and have a tight hold on our hearts... as do all of our grands. We came home on Sunday and stopped at our son's, which is about an hour and a half from home and got to see two more grands. Monday morning I woke up with a nasty head cold and scratchy throat. Wednesday our son called to say his wife had tested positive for COVID and he wanted us to test because we were there just three days before. We did and both of us tested negative... whew! We're hoping that our DIL recovers quickly and completely.
Anyway... yesterday was a gloriously sunny, bright day. Chilly, but beautiful, so hubby and I decided to set up the portable greenhouse that he gave me for my birthday. It's always interesting when we put things like that together... especially ones like that one... no actual directions, just a list of parts and a few drawings with tiny letters. But we did it!
Putting the base together...
The drawings showed a distinctly rectangular build and ours was distinctly square as you can see. We spent a bit of time going over what we had done, making sure we had used the correct parts and decided we had followed the directions properly. We then decided to just forge ahead and see how it went...
The sides and the roof are on... that went fairly smoothly...
Hubby thought it would be best to put the frame in place before we put the cover on. When we moved it into place we discovered that the space wasn't as level as we would like so there was some sod removal and soil redistribution. Can I just say that sod removal is not an easy task?
The cover is on and we were ready for the last two things... zip tying the screen shelves onto the bars and tying it down so that the wind couldn't blow it away. These two things are not in the directions but thanks to Jess over at her YouTube channel, Roots and Refuge Farm, we knew that the flimsy spikes that came with the build would not hold it down. Jess and her husband, Jeremiah are building a farm from scratch in South Carolina. They bought one of these to try because many people had asked if they were a good option for those who could not afford or had the space for a permanent structure. They put blocks around the bottom of the cover (it has small flaps that lay flat on the ground) and put a tie down over the top. We used some bricks we had laying around on the flaps and hubby used two doggie tie outs that screw into the ground to put a rope over the top. It was pretty windy yesterday afternoon and everything held well and I'm sure once the plants are in that weight will anchor it even more.
Jess and Jeremiah discovered that when you put plants on the shelves the clips that hold the shelves in place popped off and the shelf would collapse if any amount of weight was put on it. Jeremiah zip tied the shelves to the poles and they held nicely so we did the same. (I am now an expert at zip tying!) You can sort of see the white zip ties here...
We are having thirty degree weather at night right now but it is supposed to warm up next week so I am waiting until then to put my plants out there. But I'm excited to be starting my own plants from seed and being able to extend our growing season! Hopefully we can add at least another month.
Hubby also built four new garden beds. They are eight feet by four feet. I can grow a lot of vegetables in that space!
Eventually there will be another bed to the left of the one on the left back by the fence... I like things to be symmetrical!
So, when we are done both sides will look like this...
And those are my favorite things this week... beautiful new garden beds and an awesome greenhouse.
Oh my... what to grow, what to grow?
Hoping you are all staying safe and experiencing some nice spring weather where you are. Have a wonderful weekend and...
Thanks for dropping by...
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