greenhouse

Sunny snow

We haven’t had any more snow for a couple of days, but it’s been below freezing most of the time, so what’s here isn’t significantly melting. The forecast calls for more snow this weekend, so the current stuff will solidify into a layer of ice, with fresh snow on top.

Here are a few more snowy pictures, from yesterday and today.

Gobs of snow on a dogwood tree:

Snow on dogwood tree

Snow on the beehives, with icicles hanging off the roof. The snow is melting above the brown one in the foreground, which is a good sign of warm bees inside. It isn’t melting as much on the other hive, which may mean they aren’t doing so well, or the roof might just be a better insulator:

Snow on beehives

Looking up at the ceiling of the berry cage. It’s holding up nicely so far, though I worry about its capacity to cope with lots more snow. But I’m not going to try cleaning it off; I want to see what it can handle, and will repair later if needed:

Snow on berry cage

A close-up:

Snow on berry cage

Some interesting graupel patterns on the frozen pond:

Pond

The pond and snow-covered trees beyond:

Pond & trees

Me shoveling the snow from the driveway, so Jenn could go out (the car is parked inside the shop, for now, though she’ll start parking it in the breezeway next to the shop, so I can work on the duck house in there):

Clearing driveway

Snow shovel:

Clearing driveway

Icebergs sliding off the hoop house:

Snow sliding off hoop house

Morning sun through the trees:

Sun

Sparkly snow:

Sparkly snow

Frozen garden ornament, with the brown gazebo in the background:

Garden ornament

Interesting morning light, with sparkly snow, and snow-covered trees beyond the field:

Sparkly snow

Frozen small pond:

Frozen small pond

Greenhouse potting bench & shelving

A quick greenhouse update: today I assembled a potting bench and added it to the greenhouse (along with some soil bins we’ve had for years, which fit quite well):

I did think about building a custom bench, but this was pretty much exactly what we wanted, much cheaper and easier than a custom one would be.

I also added some basic metal shelving for seed trays and such:

I’ll probably build some larger wooden shelves at some point, but that’ll do for now.

Pretty much ready to start being used now:

Greenhouse assembly

Over the weekend (and a bit elsewhen) I assembled a small greenhouse purchased from Amazon.

Here are a sequence of images taken from about the same position, showing the assembly (with more detailed pics following):

Let’s go back to the beginning. Here’s the 90 lb package:

I built a foundation out of treated posts I had on hand (concrete would have been better, but this should be fine):

I secured the posts to the ground with some heavy-duty metal spikes:

The base of the greenhouse:

The base is secured to the foundation with several lag bolts:

I added an optional accessory, a louvered vent:

Back corner:

Openable roof vent:

Gutter:

Base of the door, with a magnetic catch:

Inside:

Another optional accessory, an automatic opener for the roof vent, that opens or closes it based on the temperature inside:

The vent open:

The greenhouse feels pretty solid, and hopefully is anchored quite well, but I also added a third accessory, tie-down anchor cables to make it even more secure:

The cables go over the top:

Hopefully we’ll make good use of this over time. It could be very useful to get a head start on spring veggie planting, and more.