As the regular readers of my blog know, last weekend I cleaned out most of the snow from in front of the greenhouse so that the snow could slide off the roof, and so the sun could get into the greenhouse to warm it up a bit. When I was done with that project, the front of the greenhouse looked like this.
I went out a couple of days ago and cut down the snow bank a bit more in front of the greenhouse, and then today I went back out and finished the job. The snow had slid off the roof of the greenhouse, so I had to move that pile also. It was a melty day today, the temperature was about 38 degrees F by mid afternoon when I was out working on the rest of the snow. I got it mostly cleared away now, I don't see any reason to dig away any more snow than this.
Some of the bigger frozen chunks of snow got moved over to the garden by carrying them and throwing them on top of the snow. Some of these were pretty heavy, and my back let me know about it afterword.
I can finally get into the greenhouse using the east side door again. It was frozen shut for a couple of weeks, mostly by frost heave. A couple of days of sunny weather have helped that a lot, along with several applications of sidewalk salt to melt the ice.
The west side door has more clearance, but it's falling apart and I need to fix it.
There's still a lot of snow on the back roof. It's slowly sliding off, a little bit at a time. It doesn't get the direct sun the way the south facing roof does, so it doesn't shed the snow as fast.
It was above 40 degrees F inside the greenhouse this afternoon. This thermometer is on the back wall, so it always reads low as compared to the thermometer in the middle of the greenhouse.
The inside of the greenhouse is starting to show the usual signs of late winter when the temperature starts going above freezing during the day. I'm starting to see a bit of melt water seepage inside the greenhouse now.
The back of the greenhouse is the low spot, it's had a bit of ice in it since the last warmup when we got rain a couple of weeks ago. It's starting to get more melt seepage now. Last year, it pretty much flooded out, so I expect it to be worse this year with all the snow.
I've had my solar panels in the greenhouse all winter, they're hooked up to a deep cycle battery to keep it maintained over the winter. I have 2 of them leaning against the heat wall, and 2 of them hanging from a roof support beam.
I was looking at the strawberry plants in the pots in the greenhouse and I decided to give them some water. The dirt looked dry, so I gave them some water from the fish tank. With the temps going above freezing during the day inside the greenhouse, the strawberry plants will probably start coming back to life soon. I don't want them to be all dried up, they might die.
I'm probably going to have to start checking on the strawberries fairly regularly now, just to maintain them when the start growing again.
Once we start getting more snow melting, the water will be running through the greenhouse and into the low spot in the back yard. I expect to see quite the lake in the back yard with all the snow that we've gotten. I think that's still a few weeks away though.
That's all I have for this post, I hope you found it interesting!
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