Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I NEED A BIGGER GREENHOUSE!

The biggest challenge I face in January is scheduling how I plan on turning this


into this.



I realize that this is a struggle every gardener faces in the spring.  However, I feel mine is slightly unique in that I'm having severe growing pains.  Or maybe that is not unique.  Whether unique or not, I'm struggling.  

I have a teeny, tiny greenhouse, that, at capacity holds just over 2000 plants at one time (and that is a capacity that requires very skilled, dance-like moves by me in order to fulfill water demands).  While this greenhouse is great at warming up in the sun during the day, it holds basically no heat at night although I run a little space heater in it to attempt to keep it above freezing.  

To make up for the fact that I don't have a heated greenhouse, we start all of our seedlings that require warm temperatures to germinate in the house.  I can squeeze about 700 seedlings in on tables in our bedroom under florescent lights.  Once germinated these seedlings get potted up and move into the greenhouse.  When they are big enough they move onto a flat bed trailer for a week to harden off before going into the ground-sometimes they end up on the trailer longer than that if the ground is too wet to work.  

So last year I kept this tight rotation going, seedlings moved from the house to the greenhouse to the trailer to the field.  When one seedling moved on, another was started and took it's place.  I kept a super tight rotation up for three months last year and managed to get them all into the field.  

Enter this year.  III and I make plans to double our production.  However a bigger greenhouse does not enter the plan until next year.

It should be interesting.  I'll take lots of pictures.

1 comment:

  1. Getting a bigger greenhouse for a bigger plantation needs some time. In my case It took almost a year and a half to get it done. So start it today so its easy in the future.

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