Normally the Sunday morning after market is spent with a relaxed morning eating a hearty breakfast consisting of eggs and potatoes, spending an hour on the internet reading the news since we don’t have TV reception, reading books and perhaps doing a load of laundry. No time for chilling out this past Sunday because another storm was expected and we wanted to get the greenhouse trenches filled before the storm. So we drank some coffee and were outside by 9 AM to install hydrants and fill in the trenches. We used the shovel to fill in dirt underneath our water lines in low spots so that the PVC wouldn’t break when dumping in front-end loaders full of mud. It was difficult filling the trenches with the front-end loader because the dirt was muddy globs that wouldn’t “flow”.
It is exciting that we now have power and water in each greenhouse! This project has been on our “To Do” list for years because we were hoping to have all the greenhouses up before running power and water to them; however, things didn’t work out that way, because we want to have the wood boiler installed so that we can heat the two greenhouses already up, we roughed in power and water to the two greenhouses that are not up, but at least this portion of the project is done for the future greenhouses.If we didn’t get such a deal on the greenhouses we probably would have simply gone the hoop house route because they are cheaper not needing all the gadgets; however, each of the greenhouses purchased came with vents, propane heaters, horizontal air flow fans, and exhaust fans. So even though we don’t use all those gadgets often, we are installing them, probably just because we have them. We do use them in the early spring and fall when the weather fluctuates so much but other than that we hope to just use natural ventilation with roll-up sides.
Check out the water hydrant and wire for electricity in our greenhouse!
Season extension with tomatoes, kale and swiss chard!
We planted a late crop of tomatoes, swiss chard and kale in this greenhouse hoping that the wood boiler would be installed. The temperatures this November have been unseasonally warm with only a few nights dipping below freezing. So the tomatoes have not yet died from a frost and we hope to have the wood boiler installed next week. Imagine canning salsa in December!
