Fabulous New Greenhouse

Cedar frame and sides with polycarbonate panels

My new greenhouse is finished for the most part, thanks to my wonderful, diligent, talented husband, Chris!  There are no shelves or anything inside of it yet, and we still need to fashion a window to provide some relief from the heat. We hauled all 14 pots of tomatoes, big and small off the deck and they are happily sunning themselves in the greenhouse as we speak!

Smart husband put a big rain barrel under the garage down spout to collect the rain water there. It is quite full at this time and has provided watering cans full of warm rain water to nourish the hot tomatoes for 2 days now. I fill one of my big watering cans and it is enough for all the tomato pots in the greenhouse, so there’s not too much carrying of water involved, which is good. :)

The windows are made of polycarbonate, a 1/4 inch thick sturdy type of plastic made from recycled material with a 10 year guarantee which we got from a garden centre in Calgary, the Garden Retreat.  The lower part of the greenhouse frame is made of cedar logs which our generous neighbors, John and Christina  gave us. They were orginally half logs with dove tail ends salvaged from a cabin by  John and his father. Chris cut them straight into 4 by 4s with his saw and they add a fabulous smell to the inside of the greenhouse. The dimensions of my greenhouse are 8 by 10 feet, a perfect size.

My sweet husband is going to install an automatic system that works on the temperature to turn on the fan and open a window if it gets too hot, or turn on the heater if it gets too cold in the greenhouse. That’ll be great!  

I’m really looking forward to my very first greenhouse experience!  Next spring I will be able to start my tomato, squash and flower seedlings in there instead of cluttering up every surface in my living room, LOL!  It’ll be the perfect place to store bedding plants waiting to be planted out as well. 

We had a week of unseasonably hot weather for September and it got to be over 40C in the greenhouse. Had to water the poor overheated tomato plants twice a day. There are 15 pots of tomatoes in there which had been sunning themselves on our deck up until now. There are two types of beefsteak tomatoes, some Lemon Boy sweet yellow tomatoes and some Black Krim heirloom tomatoes. Two of these plants were store bought but the rest I started from seeds of tomatoes that we had eaten over the winter. For that reason I'm really pleased with how well they have grown. We have 6 more tomato plants growing in the garden. One is an Early Girl and it did get the earliest tomatoes which ripened first. Will definitely grow more Early Girls next year!

What am I going to do with all these tomatoes you might ask?  Well, we have had fried green tomatoes a couple times already and some of them have been ripening. They are so sweet straight off the vine! I will likely make some salsa and also give a lot of them away. Canning doesn't appeal to me, though. Seems too much like work! :)

Tomatoes, anyone?