Greenhouse Update

May is here, and it's been a month since I posted about what's going on in my greenhouse. What a busy month it's been! I've been planting seedlings like crazy, and I've even had a few harvests. My first harvest was on April 29th! Before I had a greenhouse, I wouldn't have even started planting cold weather crops until mid to late April. Now I am harvesting them in April, WOW!

First harvest April 29th, radish

I planted most of the seedlings I can in the greenhouse. All I have left to plant under there are the beans. I have several seedlings waiting in their winter sowing containers that I can't plant until the greenhouse comes down.

Stuff is growing like crazy in the greenhouse too. This first picture of is of my radish bed shortly after I planted the seedlings in March.

Radish bed in March right after planting

Now, compare that to this picture that I took today of the same bed...

Radish bed full grown

WOW! I hope that all my other seedlings will grow as fast as these did.

The temperature fluctuated a lot during the past month. We had several frosty mornings, and even had some freezing nights. I was worried because I had already planted squash, and the peppers, tomatoes and other warm weather seedlings were outgrowing their winter sowing containers. I covered my warm weather vegetables just to be safe, but it hardly got below 40F in the greenhouse overnight on most nights. It did freeze in there one night when it got down into the 20s, but the extra covering saved my warm weather veggies.

Despite the cold nights, the temperature in the greenhouse spiked quickly as soon as the sun hit it in the morning, rising above 100F in a matter of hours. All these temperature changes made venting the greenhouse a bit of a chore, but not too bad. Venting the greenhouse has become much easier now that the temperatures have remained above freezing. I used to go out every night and close it up, then open it again first thing every morning. But now I can just leave it open all the time. 

Venting the greenhouse

We've had some heavy rainfalls and strong winds that have tested the greenhouse, but it has mostly been unaffected. The other night we had several inches of rain in a short time. I woke up the next morning and some water had pooled on top of one section of the greenhouse making it look a bit dilapidated. But it popped right back into shape once I dumped the water off.

We plan to take the greenhouse down at the end of May. I can't believe that in another month, the greenhouse will be down for the summer. Time is flying. By the looks of the weather forecast, we probably won't be getting anymore frost this spring, but you never know. I'm going to continue to keep an eye on it, if it still looks warm in a couple of weeks, we may take the greenhouse down early.

Even with all the work I've done over the past month, I still feel behind. Hopefully the weather will cooperate this weekend so I can get some things marked of my list.

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