Greenhouse Update

It's been about three weeks since my husband finished building the greenhouse, so I thought I would give you an update on how things are going. Once the ground started to thaw in there, it was very mucky to walk around.

Cardboard for weed barrier

I have a couple bales of straw in the greenhouse which I planned to use again this year as an organic weed barrier. I decided to lay that down now to help with the mucky ground (and extra early weed control). Before spreading out the straw, I put down a layer of newspaper and cardboard for extra weed protection.

Straw over cardboard and newspaper

It looks much nicer now, and our shoes stay clean. Actually, it smells like a barn in there, I told my husband we need to buy some chickens (ha, ha, one thing at a time!).

Layer of straw as weed barrier

At the suggestion of a reader, I moved my rain barrels into the greenhouse and filled them up with snow. Once they are full of water, the sun will heat up the water during the day, which will help keep the greenhouse warm at night. Plus, it will help with the task of watering (until it's warm enough to turn on the water outside and use a sprinkler).

Winter sown containers in the greenhouse

Last week, I decided to move my winter sown containers to the greenhouse.

I started to think about how the greenhouse will extend my growing season for up to a month.

Once I let that sink in, I had a minor panic attack.

On average, we can start planting our cold weather vegetables in mid-April.

Well, that means that I should be able to start planting them in the greenhouse in a few weeks. They were still frozen outside! We'll see what happens.

I've also sown some cold weather vegetables inside this year. I plan to move those flats to the greenhouse in the next week to harden them off. Again, we'll see what happens. It's all an experiment!

The ground in the greenhouse is taking longer to thaw than I expected. We haven't had much sun and it's been pretty cold out lately. The temperature in the greenhouse has basically remained the same as temperature outside... up until this weekend. On Sunday it was mostly sunny, and it got up to almost 70F in the greenhouse; the outside temperature was in the low 30sF.

Thermometer in greenhouse

Today, it got up into the 50sF outside, and it was sunny. I checked the max temperature in the greenhouse, and it hit a whopping 110F!! Yikes!

The winter sown containers weren't very warm inside, thank goodness. I guess I better figure out a plan for venting it before I put any more seeds out there. If this keeps up, I expect the ground to be completely thawed by the weekend. I don't know how long it normally takes to thaw though. I'm impatient and excited (and nervous) to start planting stuff!

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