Raising Seedlings in the Cold

 amount  OK, time for an update.  To the left is a photo of the greenhouse currently.  Due to the warm early weather I did a lot of planting of summer crops early in March.  On account of this we are about 45 days into the growing season.  I have begun constructing raised beds according to the grand plan, and filling them with soil removed from an area of my basement.  Below is a string of close up photos of a few of the crop beds; they are looking pretty good considering without a hoophouse most of these crops would barely even be planted yet.  First Planting of sweet corn, green beans, and sweet potatoes.  The green beans are beginning to bloom, and the corn is about waist high. This bed contains the second planting of green beans, sweet corn, and sweet potatoes which have been planted as sister crops.  Visible in this photo are tomatos, and sweet bell peppers.  Note the heavy bloom set on the tomatos. Thi...

The greenhouse from the outside  A Greenhouse Update      The greenhouse has now been covered for just over one month, so it is time for an update on the progress so far.  I began planting inside the hoophouse on February 20th, and planted lettuce spinach, radish and turnip.  Some lettuce and spinach survived the winter, and began growing as     soon as the greenhouse was covered.  The locations of the raised beds to be built were marked with string before serious planting began.  To   the right you can see plywood walkway placed to avoid compressing    soil around the overwintered greens.  Deeper into the greenhouse          hardwood mulch was added to the future walkways, as this breaks       down it will be added to the growing beds as compost, and the mulch    replaced         ...

Building an Economical Greenhouse. March 01 2012        First, I think it would be valuable to have a little background on just how it is that I became interested in greenhouse gardening.  Going way back to the beginning briefly may provide some interesting perspective.  So, childhood; I grew up in a large, thrifty family and gardening was a large part of my childhood.  All of my siblings helped out in the garden which was roughly one-half of an acre in size, but somewhere along the line I took a special shine to it.  During high school I even did a little truck crop gardening.  I grew roughly one acre of crops, mostly your average Midwestern garden fare, which I sold at a weekly farmers market in town.  In hindsight my methods were pretty crude, and the amount of work I put in was pretty huge for the amount of rewards I reaped.  After college I moved here to Rock Island, Illinois, and bought a small house on a small ...