Time for a Change... of Greenhouses

Eleven years ago, my Rion "Prestige" greenhouse kit arrived in a bunch of big rattly boxes. Looking at these photos gives me PTSD. I would never, ever, ever attempt to build my own greenhouse from a kit again, now, or ever.  But that's just me. Maybe you're more kit-oriented. Maybe there are better kits than this. Lord, there have to be. Oh, what I didn't know in this joyful moment...My greenhouse kit is here, yaaay!

In the photo you can see me standing in the humble circular imprint of my first greenhouse, which was called the Garden Pod. I loved that thing. It was tiny, but well-insulated and strong,  and I enjoyed it hugely from 2010-2012. I can't get over just how small it was. I could span it with my arms outstretched!

I used that little phone booth as well as anyone could. Man, did I cram the plants into it! It was my tiny she-shed before anyone came up with the terms.

I might still have it today, but a derecho (straight line windstorm) hit July 4 2012, and a mulberry tree fell on it and went boom. Got back from a hard week at Hog Island, Maine, to utter devastation. Luckily, there were no plants in it; it was just a winter retreat for us all. I knew I needed a greenhouse before winter came. Having experienced the mood lift, I knew I wouldn't make it through another Mid Ohio Valley winter without a greenhouse of some description.

Enter the Rion "Prestige" plastic greenhouse.  It was what I could afford at the time. You can see that fall is well in progress here!

Here I am studying the instructions, which had no words. Yep. No words at all. Just pictures, and arrows, and lines, and letters, and numbers. Saves on translating, I guess. The kit was from Israel.

It took Bill and me about six weeks to put it together, though the friendly lady on the phone said we could do it on "a good Saturday." Mmm-hmm. That would be SOME Saturday, with a crew of 12 rocket scientists.

I know I saw Part A-16 in here SOMEWHERE. Lookit th' Bacon settin' in the corner below...

Sheesh, the Prestige wasn't all that much bigger than the Pod, as I look at the Pod's imprint on the slab! 

I got four corners and a little roof height out of it. 

In the end,  I got ten years of use out of the Rion Prestige. Which, considering the quality of the materials and the janky kit construction, is astonishing. By the fourth winter, I was taping the plastic panels in place with clear Gorilla Tape. Each fall I'd rip it off, wash the plastic panels as best I could, and put fresh tape on. God, what an awful job that was, putting a ladder up on the creaking, groaning side of the Groanhouse, trying not to fall through the roof, but if I didn't do that, the panels would blow out. It happened once in a windstorm on a frigid January evening. All the heat just flew out of there, leaving my plants shivering and dying. I had to empty it immediately and fix the panel the next morning. Thank God I was home at the time. Talk about scrambling...

Ever buy 12 rolls of clear Gorilla Tape? Don't. 

What's wrong with this picture? EVERYTHING. Snow on the ground and a pane out of the Groanhouse. January, 2014. I've hauled everything but the rosemary Christmas tree out of there.

I could go on about the periodic greenhouse freezes, but y'all have been there with me. Still, in the wash, joy prevailed, and I knew I had to have a Real Greenhouse. The Rion Prestige helped get me through what I hope will be looked back on as the hardest decade of my life. And so for that, I most humbly and grumpily thank the Groanhouse.

By late winter 2023, I knew the panels wouldn't make it through another season. I could see the sky through pencil-sized holes in several of them. The frame sagged and all the rubber weatherstrip had worked its way out and couldn't be forced back in. I could hardly keep it warm with two gas heaters when the temperature dropped to the 20's, so I was in the habit of emptying the damn thing every time the mercury dropped below 20. Bringing all those plants into the house was SuCh a DrAg. 

After a decade of THAT, I'm more than ready for a real greenhouse!

To be continued...

don't y'all love a cliffhanger?

 

Color for Winter-weary Eyes

New recruits in the lettuce army. You can almost see these Japanese Buttercrunch and blood lettuce plants growing hour by hour. I'll put some out in the garden when the weather finally warms, leaving maybe six plants per planter. And I'll keep the planters by the front door where I can always pop out and get myself a salad or a leaf or two for a sandwich. I call them my sandwich gardens. They come in real handy in BLT season. 

Not sure what I'm going to do this BLT season. Traditionally it's when I fall off my no-bread wagon. But I've come too far to screw up again, having quit carbs in August '12 and dropped 20 pounds. The same 20, I'd add, that I dropped in 2000, doing the same thing. Let's just say that late-summer BLT's were part of the problem.  Because a homegrown BLT on Tuscan multigrain toast is pretty much my favorite thing in the world. Can you put a BLT on RyVita? Wrap mayo and bacon and tomato in lettuce leaves? From whence comes the satisfying crunch? Ahh, I miss crunch. Toast, food of the gods.

 Please advise, fellow low-carb sufferers. I must have my BLT. Somehow.

Who needs LT? Just give me bacon, Mether.

Occold Embers. It'll get big chestnut butterflies on its leaves in full sun, and the leaves will turn from green to bright chartreuse. Yum! It makes a statement in a planter.

Rosina Reid. A nice, compact dwarf geranium. Never drops a petal, either. The flowers just dry on the plant. Nice feature, one you come to appreciate when you have geraniums that shatter easily, dropping petals everywhere.

Grooming is so much a part of gardening. Part of the difference between a good nursery and one that doesn't care is that nobody deadheads in the latter kind. Every time I go to the greenhouse I deadhead, take off burned or yellowed leaves, just clean the plants up. The trash can is just as pretty as the flowers sometimes.

Rosemary LOVES the new greenhouse. She gets a lot more light and better air circulation than in the semi-opaque double thermopane of the Pod. Not a hint of mildew. I'm so glad I didn't throw her out come frost. 

An enigma to me is the geranium called Vancouver Centennial. These plants have gone years for me without blooming. And then bang. One will bloom. Worth waiting for, it's such a delicious light scarlet. 

But the other 99% of the year, this is what you get. Which is fine! I love this plant. It hangs onto its leaves and almost never drops one. Makes a fabulous textured mound in a big planter, a perfect foil for other free-blooming gerania. It's always part of my Hot Pot, which is a hot-colored gang planting of geraniums that I keep near the bird bath.

The one that's blooming now is a cutting of the plant above. Go figure why only the cutting bloomed. You'd think that, come time to flower, they both would. But not a sign of buds on the big plant. Does it need to have its roots crowded to bloom? I don't know. 

When it gets sunny, I open the louvered window vents. So far they work well to regulate temperatures, and only one titmouse has come in and thrown himself on the flexible plastic deli-tray walls--BONG! BONG! BONG! so far.

Vesuvius, with his bronzy chestnut leaves, and Happy Thought Pink.

Another plant I love, a geranium called Contrast. With Chet Baker for scale.

Hard to believe this plant was just inch-high stubs in November. About to bloom too, as if the leaves weren't lovely enough. Another scarlet flower coming! It's falling all over itself and needs a bigger pot so it won't tip over when it dries out.

My happy corner.

 My old Mammillaria cactus, possibly Mammillaria geminispina, blooming away. Love those rings of magenta flowers. It went about 18 years as a single column, then suddenly sent out side arms, which bloom too. You just never know what a plant's going to do. This cactus has never quailed at anything I've done. It just smiles and blooms all winter long. I move it outside in summer and let it take the rain, and water it sparingly in winter until it buds up. Then I pick up the watering a bit. Nice plants. You can forget to water them for a month and they never bat an eye. And that fuchsia pink--well, it's good for the winter-weary eye.

And the Greenhouse??

I complained a lot about the greenhouse. It was a pain to put up. Now, as spring creeps ever so slowly on, I'm crowing about it. Come on in! I do, many times daily.

You can tell from the outside there's something going on in there.

Graffiti, in scarlet and pink. Love that stellar geranium, and it's going hog-wild now. 

Fancy French blood lettuce. Delicious.

 Delicate little antique geranium Frank Headley, prone to sun and fertilizer burn around those snow-white leaf edges, but about to send up salmon flowers. I feed with Osmocote, mixing it into the soil when I pot the plants.

Happy Thought, pink. Love that color.

Happy Thought is a so-called "butterfly" pelargonium (just a fancy name for geranium). See the yellowish butterflies on the leaves?

Grey Sprite, teeny tiny mini geranium. One of my favorites.

The lettuce I planted last October is finally starting to bolt and get bitter. That's quite a run, October to April! We've had many a salad. See, I keep it near the cool floor of the greenhouse, and lettuce grows best in coolness. What a wonderful way to keep yourself in fresh lettuce. 

The tangerine hibiscus has woken up and is trumpeting its intention to stay covered in flowers all summer long. 

How about four flowers at once? (one's off to the right). I cut this baby back to sticks and would have sworn it died, but the roots were still there...roots are the key.

Hibiscus are a real challenge for me. Between aphids and two-spotted spider mites, I'm always spraying. But they hate being sprayed and respond by yellowing and dropping leaves. It's a dance we do. I've found a spray that works without being too hard on my plants. Pyrethrins are a flop. Instant leaf drop and poison, blehh.

One more reason to love geraniums: practically pest-free, but for a bit of white fly now and then.

The only spray I'll use now is homemade and non-toxic. Here's the recipe: 

To one quart water add 

3/4 cup isopropyl alcohol

2 TBS Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Castile Soap

(you know, that hippie liquid soap with all the nutty preaching on the label. All One!!)

Shake it up and spray 'er down. Be sure to hold the plant up and hit the undersides of the leaves, too. Stops aphids in their tracks, and works on scale, too. Best to do it in the evening or on cloudy days.

More greenhouse tips and treats coming.

Sunny Day Greenhouse

This is fine, this is beautiful, but as a steady diet I prefer THIS. Pow! Wham! Bang!

this photo taken Feb. 22.

Welcome to my greenhouse! Figured you'd like an update, a peek in to see how things are growing and getting along. Sunny days in the Ohio Valley winter are rare as panda thumbs so when the orb sheds her veil even for a few minutes I race down to the greenhouse to document it. It's a place that transforms in sun. When we get sun, which is about one day in every ten. Seriously, we're hanging on by our toenails here this winter.

and yes I love it love it love it (the Rion Prestige 8 x 8 Greenhouse) just as much as I hated building it from a kit, which is a LOT. Eleventy million loves, eleventy million hates. It all balanced out in the end. Way more on the love side now. It's like forgetting the pain of labor and just bouncing the baby now.

Much as I loved my Garden Pod I like this so much better, because there's room to breathe and move around and even entertain! We can get three chairs inside comfortably. We often say goodbye to the day in its friendly, glowy space. It feels like a conservatory, as opposed to a phone booth. Come April when my plants got big I could barely get in the door of the Pod. I'm so glad the concrete pad we poured was big enough for this structure. The problem now is not to stuff it so full there's no room to sit and breathe.

A tangerine hibiscus at sunset. The first flower from my brutally cut back shrub. She has forgiven me.

I've never done to my gerania what I did to them this year, which was to knock them out of the pot in November and unceremoniously rip a section of stem and root off the huge mother plants. I  fumbled around until I found a small section that felt like it might break free with its own set of roots. Once I got the roots, I trimmed the top waaay back to just a few inches high. The roots were the important part, I reasoned. The plant could always put out more leaves and branches. Turns out I was right.

The gerania sat and sulked for several weeks, losing almost all their leaves, looking like sad short burnt sticks. I kept them moist and warm. And then they woke up. Oh boy, did they wake up.

This is Vesuvius.

and this is Grey Sprite, a true miniature. Tiny plant, tiny leaves edged in white and sometimes pink.

 Graffiti pink, a stellar (star-leaved) geranium.

It's starting to look like a party in here!

The primroses are so pretty, economical dashes of crazy jeweltone color.

Jasminum polyanthemum (Pink jasmine, though there's nothing pink about it) is still stinkin' up the great indoors and setting many more buds! The Trader Joe's plastic label said it shouldn't have direct sun. Well, it seems to be blissfully unaware of that. Other sources I consulted say it needs four hours a day. Lucky if it gets that! We're striking a balance somewhere in between the thick flannel clouds and the rare sunbursts.

Here's a closeup. Wish I had Smellovision. It's really quite ridiculously intense. Just how I like my fragrant flowers. Just how I like life.

Vesuvius again, and the giant rosemary tree which, breaking with tradition, has not contracted powdery mildew in the new greenhouse.  Better air circulation, lower humidity, cooler temps. Maybe no mildew spores in the new structure.

Those jazzy Graffiti stellars...the red is the BEST scarlet, just like a May tanager. Gimme those hot colors this time of year. I need them. I need all the heat and light I can get.

Laura H , is your Vancouver Centennial geranium still hanging in there? Mine are going nuts.
They almost never bloom but when they do it's a light, brilliant scarlet.

This is Happy Thought Pink, a so called butterfly pelargonium, which are named for the yellow butterfly-shaped splotch in their variegated leaves. I adore the combo of variegated leaves and that clear, bright pink blossom. A very free bloomer, unlike its sulky Vancouver cousin. Behind, an old old fishhook barrel cactus who is determined never to bloom. Even for me. The Zick. The temerity of the plant! It cheerfully sank a spine deep into my index finger just before we went to Belize in December, and I enjoyed that spine the whole dang trip until it finally squidged its way out of my finger after a long snorkeling expotition, the sea acting as a big poultice. Whew! I recall saying to Bill, "You know what you can do with an infected cactus spine in your index finger?"
"No, what can you do?"
"Practically nothing."

You may remember the giant kalanchoe or paddle plant that was a-bloomin' four feet tall last time. Well, it got to the point where it was no longer an asset so I beheaded it and cut off its flaccid leaves, knowing it would sprout a much nicer more compact plant from the root. This, if you had not already picked it up, is the theme of this post: Beheading plants for their own good. That's a cutting behind it of Occold Embers, nicely rooted. It has a tomato-soup-red double flower.

I learned something this year. I learned a lot, actually. I learned that your beloved Garden Pod can blow clean away (well, it wasn't really clean, it was in smithereens) and that you will not only live through that unimaginable event, but make room in your schedule to spend weeks building something better and more beautiful. Yes, you will. Whether you liked the process or not, it would be worth it.

This one may yet blow away. I stood inside it as a 45 mph gale tore through and shook it last week, and it made some unearthly bangs and whumps as its deli-tray plastic windows flexed, and some weatherstripping came out, and the roof vent blew all the way open (Bill finally wired it shut with clothesline) but it did NOT blow away. That does not mean I'm looking forward to the next !@@#$#@$#@ derecho event, which had better not come the last week of June 2013, on the anniversary of the last derecho, while we're teaching The Arts of Birding at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine.

I am not going to think about that now. I am going to soak up a little more sun right here, right now.

We have had many salads off these seemingly everlasting, never-bolting Buttercrunch plants, planted last fall, outdoors. About to start a second guard of seedlings. What a feast only four plants can give! I just take the bottom tier of leaves each time and we have salad for four.

And the lyre-leafed fig bonsai is leafing out, having dropped all its leaves for much of the winter. I know how it feels. 

Sun. Soaking it up whenever I have the chance.