New Greenhouse

Ever since we moved from our house in town we have missed our little greenhouse in the back yard that was just a few steps from the house.  This summer Tom became acquainted with one of the Mennonite men who has a plant nursery and sells flowers and bedding plants at the Farmers Market.  This fellow also builds greenhouses and decks.  We went to look at a large greenhouse that one of the other farmers market vendors purchased from him and were very impressed.  We don't need one that large, but he builds smaller ones, too.

Tom stewed about buying one of the smaller ones all summer.  Finally, in October, he decided to use some of the money we've made this year from our Farmers Market endeavor to buy an 8X12 greenhouse.  Here's a picture of it.

We had them put it next to the house.  You cannot see very well, but there is about 2 feet between it and the house.  Notice that it is located so that we can walk into it from under the patio cover so in bad weather we won't get wet going to and from it.

You can't see the sliding door that leads out onto the patio from the house; nor can you see the patio itself. But, there is a strip of dirt between the patio and the greenhouse. We plan to build a deck to cover this area. We had this area covered by a conglomeration of mismatched paving stones and bricks. These were uneven and somewhat of a safety hazard!  I've been wanting to do something about this area ever since we moved here and am looking forward to finally making it into a nice enjoyable outdoor area.


Once the greenhouse was in place, we had a dump truck bring in a load of gravel and we put about 6 inches of gravel over the floor of the greenhouse.  This will keep it from getting muddy when we water plants and will also act as a "heat sink" to collect heat during the day and release it at night.

I was pretty impressed with the dump truck.  Guess I've never seen one up that close.  The guy in the picture is standing in the door of the truck while he is dumping the gravel so he can keep an eye on the electric lines above.