We have finally finished building one of our greenhouses! And let me tell you that we didn't expect it to be so complicated...
It all started when it was delivered. Our garden doesn't have an address, so I couldn't have it delivered there. Instead, I had to use our home address. We live on the 9th floor, and I had some doubts about the delivery since the beginning. We couldn't let it stay downstairs in the main hall due to the safety reasons as it would have to stay there for almost a week since we were about to leave for a short vacation in the evening of scheduled delivery. I paid for the delivery to our door and prayed that it would fit in the lift. Of course it didn't! The delivery guys were able to bring the smaller greenhouse up the staircase, but the bigger one didn't even fit there. They were not very friendly (which I'm not surprised about as these were heavy packages), and we had to act before we left..
Luckily, I remembered that one of our friends had a contact for a handyman who could fix literally anything. I called her and she gave me his number. Fortunately, he was able to come in the afternoon and bring the greenhouses to our garden with my husband. The bigger one fit just right in his van. He even helped to bring the smaller greenhouse back down the stairs which wasn't easy at all. All he asked for was a cup of coffee for 2 hours of work, but we insisted to pay him properly. Once he accepted the money he told us that he will do the next job for us for free. So good to have contacts like this as there is enough to be done at our home!
When we came back from our vacation, we asked a couple of our friends if they could help us in the garden. They were so happy that we asked and told us that they have expecting us to ask them much earlier. They have never worked in a garden and thought it was much easier than it actually is. They spent one Sunday with us in the garden. He helped my husband to put together most of the greenhouse's frame and she helped me to remove some plants and clean the garden a little bit. The day after they told us that they had soar muscles and he caught a flu. Well, rookie mistakes! Bad clothing and no magnesium in the evening 馃槉 I didn't want to remind them that I told them what to do...
It took my husband 4 additional evenings to finish the construction. There were so many screws and parts, and not everything fit together properly so he kept doing some adjustments which took him a lot of time. He also noticed some mistakes in the instructions which didn't make the job any easier.
You can see on his face that he wasn't too happy...
But then he was feeling so proud when he finally finished it. There is still plastic stuck on the inside of the panels, but we will remove them later.
Look how pretty it is! And it has sliding doors! We still need to add some soil around the construction as we're afraid it will fly away to our neighbours at some point. We also want to buy some stones to make a path in the middle of the greenhouse, but this will have to wait until spring. We have another smaller greenhouse to build! It's only 60 cm shorter, but it's the same construction, so it's going to take a lot of time again.
I've been cleaning the garden since one week and preparing it for winter. I've been sowing cover crops such as mustard to provide organic matter and nutrients in our garden. Apparently, it also helps with weeds because its strong roots don't let weeds to grow among them. We'll see if it's true next year...
We are lucky to still have some autumn crops to harvest. One of them is my selection of green beans. Half of the plants was eaten by mice when they were young, but the other half is giving us a lot of beans. Sharing is caring.
And our self-sown salad is so beautiful! In spring, we only had green and purple ones, but now there are pink shades too. I'm planning to cover it with plastic, so that it doesn't freeze and we can enjoy them for as long as possible.
I have planted lamb's lettuce instead of green cover in some parts of the garden. They grow slow and can survive up to the temperature of -15 degrees Celsius which makes them the perfect crop for winter. The temperature where we live never goes so low, so we can likely enjoy the fresh salad all winter.
Another advantage is that slugs don't enjoy dark green leaves, and we don't need to check on them every day. However, we noticed that birds like to pick on them, but the damage is not too serious, so we just let it be. I will plant some plants inside of the greenhouse where they will be protected against birds.
Look how cute they are!
I have also planted onions for next year. There are yellow, red and white one. The yellow and the red ones should be ready in June and the white ones can be harvested in April already. In total, I have over 200 onions! The photo is from before I covered them with soil...
Our roses just don't want to stop flowering. I want to prune them, but I'm still waiting until they stop producing flowers. They smell so good!
I wanted to use them in my kitchen, but since our gardening predecessor used lots of pesticides I didn't want to do it yet. I will wait for a couple of years to make sure that it's safe to use.
Our English roses are cuter than they were in summer. I think they prefer colder temperatures...
We also have ONE perennial sunflower. I removed them all in spring thinking they were weeds that were taking over my garden. They were spreading rapidly and had large roots system. I hoped to have destroyed it, and now I'm happy I didn't succeed. I will let them grow next year, but I will control the area that they spread to.
Our garden is far from ready for winter and it's been raining for the last couple of days, so I couldn't do anything, but we expect a few dry days going forward, and I can't wait to continue the work. It's a hard work, but I enjoy it in a way 馃槈
See you next time!
