Greenhouse Pictures!

Sorry, Faith - this took awhile.  Finally, I am posting these pictures.  We adapted the hoop house to fit up against our house, attached to the deck.  It has the added benefit of sheltering the stair case which was getting pretty beat up in the weather.  So far, I have transplanted 14 small tomato volunteers and started a few eggplant seeds.  The eggplant seeds are quite old, so we'll see if they sprout.

Out in the garden, I planted some garlic that sprouted in my fridge.  It was grown in Hawaii, so I have hopes.  I also planted some onion seeds, turnips, beets, lettuce, and mustard cabbage.  Of course, now that I have planted seeds, the sky is rapidly clouding over.  It never seems to fail that when I plant seeds, it pours for days and washes the seeds away.  If I do get anything, they are all out of place and I am left guessing what they are.  It was very sunny when I was planting, and the soil was lovely and fine and dry.  Next time there is a drought (rare), I will know what to do.  Plant some seeds and let the rain come to fill up the tanks! 

Here is a picture of the finished greenhouse - view from the stairway.  

Looking down the staircase.  

 Looking down from the deck.  You can see how we put up the beam and attached it to the frame.

 The early stages, just the pcv frame is up.

 A view from near the water heating solar panels.

We extended the frame out a bit over the raised area next to the pump house and water heating panels.  I really need to pull that volunteer avocado out of there!  I plan to use the lava rock walls as supports and a seed starting place.  We've always talked about terracing that area for a small kitchen garden or veggie start bed.

 You can see how the hoops attach to the deck here.

And here, too...

I was so pleased with the project, I guess I overdid it with pictures.

Now that we are going to spend so much time "down below", we should really stop using it as a storage place for construction leftovers.  

 Here is a detail of how the pvc attaches to the flange on the deck side.  The greenhouse beam is a bit over 10 feet in height.  It's about 20 feet long and 12 feet deep.

 The boys moved some old 20 ft. long boards out to the greenhouse yesterday, so I do have some surface to keep the seed trays up off the ground and out of reach of my naughty dogs.  I am so delighted with this project!  The ends are still open so it is more a rain cover than a warmer area.  I am going to try the tomatoes in there, because they really do suffer in the heavy rain we have here regularly.