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The Greenhouse Effect
Jun. 1st, 2018 08:45 pmAs you may know (or not), I have in recent years grown rather obsessed with my garden. Having slooowly removed (most of) the stones from the rather loamy ground and improved it by adding compost (for the plants) and sand (to make it less claggy) and invested several months of the last two years into building raised beds, I was suddenly able to grow and harvest veggies that had so far refused to even germinate.
But of course there are plants that just don't deal well with our changeable and often wet climate; that need more warmth, and for a longer period of time, than our region offers (you have to expect relapses into frost until Mid-May). So I've been dreaming, on and off, about setting up an enclosed, protected place for growing tomatoes and eggplant and stuff.
Now, there's a problem with our grounds: They're halfway down a hill. Halfway down a hill means that everything is sloped, unless it has been artificially levelled. There's the paved courtyard, and a bit of more or less even ground underneath the walnut tree, where we've put the excavated soil (and rocks) from back when we drained the former pigsty, and a bit of even ground in the part of the garden that belongs to the mother-in-law's flat, and the lower driveway. All of these are, for one reason or another, unsuitable. Besides, we didn't have the money for a glasshouse, anyway. But maybe a polytunnel...?
Then one day in 2017, while digging for the meagre remains of compost and unearthing yet more rubble that our charming predecessors for some reason disposed of underneath their compost heap, I realised that the location for the compost heap was... even. Well, not really. It was actually a heap of rubble, loosely covered with compost, behind a wall in front of a slope. But it would be possible to... remove the stuff, replace it with earth, reinforce the slope and look for a second-hand polytunnel or something on ebay. Next year.
I accidentally mentioned this thought experiment to the husband. I should have known that he, whose tolerance towards compromise and makeshift solutions rivals such flexible thinkers as Marcus Porcius Cato or Curufinwë Fëanáro, would find the thought of a second-hand polytunnel, sloppily put up on a haphazard heap of earth, utterly abhorrent. But I didn't. I pretty much forgot about it. Meanwhile, the husband conspired with his mother, his brother and my parents to buy an expensive, semi-professional greenhouse from a notable Danish company. It was secretly delivered (during a sleet storm, I might add) under the guise of "mirrors 'n stuff for the gym that the mother-in-law had agreed to accept on behalf of her sports club because none of the other responsible people were at home in the morning", so I, being the bitchy grump that I am, offered a lot of choice words about the fact that we had to accept a whole set of huge, heavy, cumbersome pallets marked "breakable" that would block our barn until the sports club would manage to pick them up. This turned out to be my Christmas surprise. (Incidentally, we had agreed to only give each other small things because we were, as usually, broke. Imagine my face when I expected, like, Flora of Middle-earth and a pair of woollen socks or sth, and got a whole expensive greenhouse instead. After having been a grumpy bitch about its delivery.)
Well, it had been delivered, but now it still had to be assembled. Of course, a proper greenhouse needs a proper baseplate. A proper baseplate requires dry weather and temperatures above 5°C. This winter was uncooperative: First it was wet, and then, a few weeks into the new year, it grew cold. And stayed cold. Usually, we get a few weeks of false spring in March, when it'll get nice and warm and sunny before crashing back down for the usual April shenanigans. This year, everything froze up and stayed frozen, with the occasional snowfall, until Easter. So when it finally grew warm, there was a rather heavy sense of obligation to get the greenhouse set up in time for the summer season. Except that the frost had also killed the already fragile wall that held back the slope into the lower driveway. It broke together just in time for the holidays. Accordingly, the first priority was to restore that wall, at least up to the point where the slope needs to stay in its place because there's a propane tank standing on it.
On the plus side, when ordering the material for the wall, Jörg also ordered the concrete blocks and cement for the baseplate. We also had a small digger for a weekend, which made digging out the debris a lot easier than it would otherwise have been.
Of course, we made the mistake of trusting our visual judgement, a really smart idea when every line of reference is a slope and big chunks of debris force you to dig far beyond the lines that you've measured. As a result, our right angles weren't actually right and our straight lines weren't actually straight, and we needed to correct quite a bit manually. (We'd already had to remove some of the bigger blocks of debris - the remains of a silo, as far as we can guess - by hand, because they had proved to unwieldy for the small digger. For that purpose, we - that is, mostly Jörg's brother - broke them up with a sledge hammer. This ultimately proved too hard on our poor sledgehammer.
But in the end, the ditch for the fundament was done. Then Jörg built and fixed the boarding. Sometimes, Felix helped. (Mostly, he offered to help and then wandered off.)
We filled the boarding in one gruelling, utterly murderous afternoon - we, in this case, being Jörg and I. We have a small old-fashioned cement mixer so we didn't have to stir it manually, but we still had to load it, and then get the cement into the boarding. 17 times.
When we were done, it turned out that the boarding had shifted and we still didn't have a perfectly angular fundament. Jörg made the best of it, modelling little ridges and supporting the cement blocks with little rocks where necessary. We managed to recruit two friends to help with the filling of the blocks, managing the same work that had taken us half a day in two hours - and leaving us not nearly as drained. Surprise, surprise...
The baseplate is finished! In the meantime, Jörg had prepared the metal frame for the actual greenhouse (not included in delivery; you have to buy it separately for - you guessed it - several hundred bucks. But they very much recommend that you buy it because otherwise you might run into severe trouble when inserting the glass panes.) Somehow, the surface of the baseplate still wasn't wholly level, so it's probably a good thing we invested into that frame.
Then, it was finally time to install the greenhouse proper! This brought a whole new range of problems because the construction manual was pretty awful. You need not only 160% vision, but should actually be clairvoyant to know which screws you'll be needing 20 steps from now. Whoever wrote that manual hates their customers and probably wants them to shell out another 200 bucks for their construction helpers. But we couldn't even if we'd wanted to, because we are now more broke than ever.
Nonetheless, it took shape at last! Because it had cost us so much time and effort, we figured that it deserved the traditional topping-out wreath. Can't hurt...
Yesterday, I carried my collection of tomato plants and my teeny tiny eggplants and peppers into the greenhouse. I'm also planning on trying out sweet potatos and melons, but those plants aren't there yet. It's looking so tidy now! I hope it's going to be stuffed by autumn. ^^
After two weeks of draught, it started raining this morning, so we finished the project just in time, too. Well, not completely finished. The frame has to be encased in concrete, and on the side of the door, the ditch has to be filled in (after installing drainage) and the ground levelled... but we have time until autumn. Psyched to have a proper greenhouse now! Even though honestly, I would've been content with a cheap second-hand polytunnel. And a pair of socks.
Now those tomatoes better grow, because we can't afford buying fresh veg for much longer! >_>
But of course there are plants that just don't deal well with our changeable and often wet climate; that need more warmth, and for a longer period of time, than our region offers (you have to expect relapses into frost until Mid-May). So I've been dreaming, on and off, about setting up an enclosed, protected place for growing tomatoes and eggplant and stuff.
Now, there's a problem with our grounds: They're halfway down a hill. Halfway down a hill means that everything is sloped, unless it has been artificially levelled. There's the paved courtyard, and a bit of more or less even ground underneath the walnut tree, where we've put the excavated soil (and rocks) from back when we drained the former pigsty, and a bit of even ground in the part of the garden that belongs to the mother-in-law's flat, and the lower driveway. All of these are, for one reason or another, unsuitable. Besides, we didn't have the money for a glasshouse, anyway. But maybe a polytunnel...?
Then one day in 2017, while digging for the meagre remains of compost and unearthing yet more rubble that our charming predecessors for some reason disposed of underneath their compost heap, I realised that the location for the compost heap was... even. Well, not really. It was actually a heap of rubble, loosely covered with compost, behind a wall in front of a slope. But it would be possible to... remove the stuff, replace it with earth, reinforce the slope and look for a second-hand polytunnel or something on ebay. Next year.
I accidentally mentioned this thought experiment to the husband. I should have known that he, whose tolerance towards compromise and makeshift solutions rivals such flexible thinkers as Marcus Porcius Cato or Curufinwë Fëanáro, would find the thought of a second-hand polytunnel, sloppily put up on a haphazard heap of earth, utterly abhorrent. But I didn't. I pretty much forgot about it. Meanwhile, the husband conspired with his mother, his brother and my parents to buy an expensive, semi-professional greenhouse from a notable Danish company. It was secretly delivered (during a sleet storm, I might add) under the guise of "mirrors 'n stuff for the gym that the mother-in-law had agreed to accept on behalf of her sports club because none of the other responsible people were at home in the morning", so I, being the bitchy grump that I am, offered a lot of choice words about the fact that we had to accept a whole set of huge, heavy, cumbersome pallets marked "breakable" that would block our barn until the sports club would manage to pick them up. This turned out to be my Christmas surprise. (Incidentally, we had agreed to only give each other small things because we were, as usually, broke. Imagine my face when I expected, like, Flora of Middle-earth and a pair of woollen socks or sth, and got a whole expensive greenhouse instead. After having been a grumpy bitch about its delivery.)
Well, it had been delivered, but now it still had to be assembled. Of course, a proper greenhouse needs a proper baseplate. A proper baseplate requires dry weather and temperatures above 5°C. This winter was uncooperative: First it was wet, and then, a few weeks into the new year, it grew cold. And stayed cold. Usually, we get a few weeks of false spring in March, when it'll get nice and warm and sunny before crashing back down for the usual April shenanigans. This year, everything froze up and stayed frozen, with the occasional snowfall, until Easter. So when it finally grew warm, there was a rather heavy sense of obligation to get the greenhouse set up in time for the summer season. Except that the frost had also killed the already fragile wall that held back the slope into the lower driveway. It broke together just in time for the holidays. Accordingly, the first priority was to restore that wall, at least up to the point where the slope needs to stay in its place because there's a propane tank standing on it.
On the plus side, when ordering the material for the wall, Jörg also ordered the concrete blocks and cement for the baseplate. We also had a small digger for a weekend, which made digging out the debris a lot easier than it would otherwise have been.
Of course, we made the mistake of trusting our visual judgement, a really smart idea when every line of reference is a slope and big chunks of debris force you to dig far beyond the lines that you've measured. As a result, our right angles weren't actually right and our straight lines weren't actually straight, and we needed to correct quite a bit manually. (We'd already had to remove some of the bigger blocks of debris - the remains of a silo, as far as we can guess - by hand, because they had proved to unwieldy for the small digger. For that purpose, we - that is, mostly Jörg's brother - broke them up with a sledge hammer. This ultimately proved too hard on our poor sledgehammer.
But in the end, the ditch for the fundament was done. Then Jörg built and fixed the boarding. Sometimes, Felix helped. (Mostly, he offered to help and then wandered off.)
We filled the boarding in one gruelling, utterly murderous afternoon - we, in this case, being Jörg and I. We have a small old-fashioned cement mixer so we didn't have to stir it manually, but we still had to load it, and then get the cement into the boarding. 17 times.
When we were done, it turned out that the boarding had shifted and we still didn't have a perfectly angular fundament. Jörg made the best of it, modelling little ridges and supporting the cement blocks with little rocks where necessary. We managed to recruit two friends to help with the filling of the blocks, managing the same work that had taken us half a day in two hours - and leaving us not nearly as drained. Surprise, surprise...
The baseplate is finished! In the meantime, Jörg had prepared the metal frame for the actual greenhouse (not included in delivery; you have to buy it separately for - you guessed it - several hundred bucks. But they very much recommend that you buy it because otherwise you might run into severe trouble when inserting the glass panes.) Somehow, the surface of the baseplate still wasn't wholly level, so it's probably a good thing we invested into that frame.
Then, it was finally time to install the greenhouse proper! This brought a whole new range of problems because the construction manual was pretty awful. You need not only 160% vision, but should actually be clairvoyant to know which screws you'll be needing 20 steps from now. Whoever wrote that manual hates their customers and probably wants them to shell out another 200 bucks for their construction helpers. But we couldn't even if we'd wanted to, because we are now more broke than ever.
Nonetheless, it took shape at last! Because it had cost us so much time and effort, we figured that it deserved the traditional topping-out wreath. Can't hurt...
Yesterday, I carried my collection of tomato plants and my teeny tiny eggplants and peppers into the greenhouse. I'm also planning on trying out sweet potatos and melons, but those plants aren't there yet. It's looking so tidy now! I hope it's going to be stuffed by autumn. ^^
After two weeks of draught, it started raining this morning, so we finished the project just in time, too. Well, not completely finished. The frame has to be encased in concrete, and on the side of the door, the ditch has to be filled in (after installing drainage) and the ground levelled... but we have time until autumn. Psyched to have a proper greenhouse now! Even though honestly, I would've been content with a cheap second-hand polytunnel. And a pair of socks.
Now those tomatoes better grow, because we can't afford buying fresh veg for much longer! >_>
