Sage Gardens

In an earlier post I wrote that I was going to re-cover my coldframe greenhouse. And despite a few days delay due to bad weather, I did finally get around to it.

About 10 years ago when I built the greenhouse, I had originally looked into getting a nice glass one, but I didn’t have the $7,000 to $10,000 to spend, so I had to look into cheaper alternatives.

I happen to live in a big flower and indoor plant growing region of the country, with large growers like Kent’s Bromeliads and Plug Connection and hundreds of smaller outfits all within a couple mile radius. Most of these operations (large and small) use aluminum-framed round-top greenhouses covered with and extra thick and flexible plastic designed specifically for this use. Since we have lots of sunny days, and temperatures rarely dip below the freezing mark, these types of greenhouses work very well here. They trap enough heat to keep the plants warmer than they would be outside, but they also release it easily enough so you don’t have to have a lot of cooling and ventilation systems beyond a couple of openings at either end (and maybe one or two on top).

After visiting a friend’s growing operation (he grows poinsettias), and reading a few books on building greenhouses and greenhouse basics, I figured I knew enough to build my own from scratch.

Rather than using aluminum or wood framing, I decided to build mine with schedule 40 PVC pipe and cover it with 6mil plastic. PVC is lighter, less expensive and easier to work with than aluminum, and it won’t rot like wood. I was able to get all the components I needed to build a 10′ by 18′ greenhouse from my local home center for about $150–much better than $7,000! (One day, I’ll get around to posting the plans here on the site so you can build your own.)

The only drawback is that after a full season of sun exposure, 6 mil plastic tends to crack and split. You can extend the life of the plastic by 6 to 8 weeks by spray painting it with white paint, but I usually don’t go to the effort. I use my greenhouse primarily in the late winter/early spring to get plants started, and again in the fall to extend the season a bit, so I don’t really need it covered 365 days a year.

Anyway, toward the end of winter each year I go though the process of re-covering the greenhouse and getting it prepped for the new growing season. Here’s how this year’s went:

Step 1: Cleaning it up

After standing uncovered all winter and having the chickens, ducks and other animals in the lower yard trampling through it, the greenhouse is a real mess. All of the tables, pots, buckets, etc. have to be removed. Before the new covering can be placed on it, the frame has to be scraped with a putty knife to remove the old plastic and glue.

The tools

My tools — a roll of 6 mil plastic, a glue gun and low-temperature glue sticks. It’s quick, inexpensive and does a great job of secureing the cover to the frame.

Setp 2: The back wall

Starting with the back wall, which is on the low part of the hill facing west, I use a spring clamp to hold the plastic in place as I glue. Istart at the top and work my way halfway down one side, then go back to the top and work halfway down the other.

Finally I glue all the way down to the base on both sides, tuck the bottom of the plastic under the frame base and glue it in place. Then I go back and trim the excess from the sides, making a complete wall.

Step 3: The front

I do the front in two segments because there’s less wasted plastic with the door and vent window in the center.

As with the back wall, I clamp and glue one side, snipping the plastic and gluing around the door frame.

Then I repeat on the other side to complete the front. Finally, I’ll snip the plastic around the upper vent and glue it to the vent frame.

Step 4: The top

Getting the plastic over the top of the greenhouse is the hardest part to do working alone. I unroll about 25 feet of the plastic, cut it and then pull it over the top of the greenhouse while it’s still folded. Once I’ve got it pulled over and evened out on both sides, I unfold it on one end and open it a far as it will go. Then I switch to the other side and do the same.

Eventually it unfolds enough where I can drag one end all the way to the front and the other all the way to the back. Then I just have to even out the ends so it hangs over the front and back equally.

Step 5: attaching the top

Once I’ve got the overhang equal, I clamp the plastic in place and glue the top to the frame the same way I do the ends. The excess is trimmed from the front and back while excess on the sides is tucked under the frame and glued to secure it and then trimmed.

After that it’s just a matter of gluing new plastic on the door and vent window frames and mounting all of them back on their hinges.

All Done!

Viola! In about 4 hours the greenhouse is completely re-covered! Now I just have to move the tables and pots back in and it’s ready for plants.

(Hmmm… I just noticed that the birdfeeder in the foreground is broken and about to fall off. I’ll have to fix that.)

I was just pulling the eggs out of the chicken coop and found this:

It’s an egg that’s smooth on the front and back but puckered all around the sides like a throw pillow.

Wonder what this chicken has been up to…

A few days I go I wrote that I knew it was bad luck to starting my planting before March 15th, but I decided to do it anyway because we had such a mild winter. Well yesterday I ordered my seeds and today I planned to re-cover the coldframe greenhouse. So I get out of bed this morning and this is what I see out my window:

The biggest Pacific storm of the season rolling in from the north west.

So much for re-covering the coldframe. It’s official: I control the weather. If I want it to rain, all I have to do is plan to work in the gardens.

Now if I could just figure out how to control the lottery…

I can’t take it anymore. Even though I know it’s bad luck, I’m going to go ahead and start planting vegetables for late spring and summer. (Every time I plant corn or tomatoes before March 15, we get frost, monsoonal rain, plagues of frogs, etc. that invariably wipe the young plants out.)

I’m placing a seed order with Pinetree Garden Seeds today.

My coldframe greenhouse waiting to be re-covered

Tomorrow I’m going out to clean up and re-cover my coldframe greenhouse so it’s ready when the seeds finally arrive.

Garden season — woo hoo!

We haven’t had much rain this winter — less than 3 inches so far — and only a couple of nights of frost (normal is around 14 nights between late december and mid-February). The mild winter has meant two things:

1. I’ve actually had to water the orchards and herb gardens
2. All of the flowering plants seem to be waking up from a short winter’s nap.

Clivia in full bloom in late February

Normally I take the winter off and let the gardens go wild. We don’t have bad winters here, but they can be very unpredictable. We’ll get rain and then some weather in the 60’s (high teens for those of you in Celcius-land), which causes everything thing to sprout, followed by several nights of frost which kills everything that just sprouted. And then the cycle repeats itself.

The one exception seems to be the citrus. The navel oranges ripen in late December and early January, the grapefruit, limes, tangerines and lemons shortly thereafter.

Navel Oranges ripen in December/January.

While we eat a lot of the fruit (especially the oranges and tangerines), the vast majority of it goes into our winter seasonal soaps, Fresh Orange, Zesty Grapefruit, and California Lemon. For each 40 pound batch of soap we’ll pick around 20 pounds of fresh fruit which results in about 2 pounds of dried and ground zest ultimately added to the soap.

Tangerines ripen in late January / early February

Unlike commercial citrus operations, we don’t pick all the fruit at once. We’ll leave it on the tree and pick it only as needed, which allows the fruit to stay fresh longer than it would if we tried to pick it all and store it. (Plus we really don’t have the room to store it, and leaving it in open bins would simply be a lunch invitation for all the critters.)

Grapefruit is ready by mid-February

By late April the trees will start to bloom and the gardens will be filled with the wonderful and heady scent of orange blossom. (You can usually smell them all the way up into the house.) At that point any fruit not already picked will start to drop off the tree, and if I don’t hurry, it all falls to the ground and I have to fight the ducks, chickens, raccoons, etc. for what usable fruit remains. I’ll dry and store as much as possible, which allows us to continue producing the citrus soap until mid-to-late June. Eventually, however, it’s all gone and that’s the end of the soap until the next season.

If you’d like to try the citrus soaps, you can find them all in the bath shop.