Growing our own.

Well reader this is starting to become a bit of a habit. A third post this year and it's not even October yet. As I vaguely hinted at in the shed blog (What do you mean you haven't read it? You must find time to immerse yourself in its visual symphony and marvel at my DIY and photoblog coding skills) This is a mini follow up to include the greenhouse build and garden vegetable patch makeover.

Much of this resulted from having a sizable pile of bricks left over from knocking the front part of the old shed down and spotting a second hand 'proper' greenhouse in the local online ad listings. A spot of expert haggling reduced the price of the greenhouse from £70 to £50. It came with some deck boards as a makeshift base(they were roughly cut and it was just placed on them in the garden where we dismantled and fetched it from) I think there were 13 boards and 3 or 4 lengths of studding, as luck would have it I saved the picture from the original ad listing...old bloggers habit see. It also included some rather nifty shelving units and a selection of plant pots. In the past I've had several plastic/poly bag 'greenhouses'  none of which has lasted more than a season or two.

The vegetable patch is what used to be our lawn, our garden slopes down away from the house and over the years we have altered it so it consists of three flat(ish) levels, patio at the top, lawn/veg patch in the middle and my shed area at the bottom. Connecting them is a ramp down the side, originally for bikes and the like and a couple of steps down on to the lawn. Much groundwork, walls, gates and fence building has gone on at various junctures over the last 26 years or so mostly aimed at keeping kids and/or wammals contained in suitable areas.
Now here's a top tip, when purchasing garden buildings pay particular attention to their size, otherwise you could be tempted to think a 6'x6' greenhouse doesn't take up that much more room than a 6'x4'...After laying out the 6'x6' square greenhouse base on the lawn I concluded that a raised deck protruding say umm 2ftish  beyond the boundary wall of said lawn would craftily obfuscate any slight *cough* errors in judgement. When space is at a premium 12sq ft can grow a lot of beans.

Getting Started Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Once I'd tidied up the garden enough to start I knocked up the frame and steps for the deck using reclaimed and left over joists from the shed build, the decking itself is entirely what came with the greenhouse. I left a quarter of the interior un-boarded for directly planting in to and used the square footage I saved from that to do the front and the steps.

Bricks & Mortar Click thumbnails to enlarge...

 With the pile of bricks cleaned off a bit I put 3 courses on top of the lawn retaining walls and added a little dwarf wall down the side of the greenhouse. We leveled the old veg patch/lawn off properly and added fresh compost from the two full compost bins I'd had brewing for about the last 3 years. I rebuilt the picket fence and added a hole digging dog thwarter gate for easy access from the greenhouse side.

If you have stumbled into this page interested in the horticulturing aspect of greenhouses I can't really provide much other than these pics of what we have grown over the last few months.

Fruits Of Labour Click thumbnails to enlarge...

 We have beans...lots of them, we did start weighing them as we were using them, but lost count after a few weeks and upwards of 25lb's worth. The cucumbers have done very well, I guess about 2 dozen so far off 7 plants grown from a poundshop grow your own seed kit containing a little propogator and a cupful of compost. The wife has just pickled the first few beetroot and there are radishes, sprouts, a few sacrificial lettuce (we hoped they might safisfy a few creepy crawlies and birds..) plus a paltry 2 carrots (..they didn't). 3 out of about 15 peppers did start to come but got bullied by the cucumbers and tomatoes while I wasn't looking and we failed on peas, spring onions and flowers completely. I did however use the first ripened tomato in a cheese and tom sandwich yesterday.