It's 9 degrees F and supposed to drop below 0 overnight. The ground is frozen hard, but unlike the past two years, no blanket of snow, no roofs to shovel, no broken snowblower(s). The garlic is planted, (some in wine barrels to protect it from those frigging pocket gophers), SeedSavers catalog has already come, and Steve has already circled a few varieties to try next year.
Earlier this fall, friends gave us 8 sheets of clear corrugated plastic roofing and 12 16' 2x4s. That gave me the idea of a pole "barn" greenhouse. We have never built anything like this before. At 2465 ft., our growing season tends to be shorter than we'd like, and gee it would be great to get tomatoes before September! Plus, a greenhouse would be nice for peppers, eggplant, and other tropical veggies that dislike our overnight lows in the summertime.
I drew up plans making it 8'x8', with a shed roof. The north posts are 10' high, and the south posts are 6', having dug four 2' deep postholes. (Actually, we hired a friend's 21 year old son to do the digging honors since both of us have joint problems rearing ugly symptoms). Once the 4"x4" treated posts were set in cement, we put down treated 2x4s for footers. A trip to Home Depot in the Grey Ghost netted the rest of the roofing, a new Ryobi drill driver and jigsaw, 2x2s and 2x3s for the doors, and hardware. That's all we bought since we had a bunch of 2x6s left over from moving the decks when we deconstructed the house to move it here. So we used mostly recycled 2x6s for the framing and building a catwalk to get up and reach that tall back wall. Our next door neighbor loaned us scaffolding when we found that we couldn't finish the outside of it safely. Thanks Neil!
Because the greenhouse has such a sturdy frame, we can furnish the inside with shelves all the way up the back wall and a table in the front. Two huge windstorms tested the structure, and it has proven rock solid.
Now we have all winter to plan our nursery!
