Hello, hivers, and welcome to da greenhouse, eh!
After my recent adventure in the greenhouse with the pond fish tank, I got to thinking about starting the prep work to get the greenhouse ready for spring. The weather has been mild for the past couple of weeks with daytime highs a bit above freezing, and a few sunny days.
Last Saturday was one of those sunny days, so I went out to the greenhouse to start moving stuff out of the way in the front of the greenhouse. We store stuff in the greenhouse in the winter, and it gets crowded in there by the end of winter.
I had to look at my thermometers when I first got out there to see what the temperature was inside. This one is in the middle of the greenhouse.
This one is on the back wall. It always reads lower because it's affected by the outside temperature coming through the uninsulated wall.
The nice temperature in the greenhouse certainly makes it more pleasant to do the work. With the above freezing temps outside, I'm starting to get the usual spring water infiltration into the greenhouse. The greenhouse is slightly downhill from the house, so the melt water tends to end up on the greenhouse floor to some extent. It might not be too bad this year because we haven't had that much snow over the winter, so far.
I have 4 solar panels in the roof rafters of the greenhouse to charge my deep cycle battery. I had the battery in the basement during the cold part of the winter, but I decided to bring it back out and hook it up to the solar panels. These are older panels that are 15 watts each.
The little charge controller is working pretty well.
Here's part of the mess I had to take care of.
After moving a bunch of stuff around, it looks a lot better.
Now I just have to wait until the dirt in these bags thaws out so I can get back to filling the pots.
I'm filling the pots with fresh dirt this year. I've been growing paste type tomatoes in these pots for 4 years without changing out all of the dirt in each pot, so it's time for fresh dirt. Before I put the dirt in the pots, I mix in some vermiculite to help keep it lose, and it also helps a bit with water retention. I was working on it last fall, but I ran out of decent weather before I got very far. I mix the dirt and vermiculite in batches in my smaller wheelbarrow. This picture is from the beginning of December 2020.
I'd like to get this done before I need to have it done, so it's ready for planting in May. With the way my back is these days, I can't do it all at once, so I need to peck away at it as I can.
We have more mild weather coming in this next week, so I may be able to work with the dirt to some extent in the next few days, especially if we get sunny days. That will help thaw out more of the dirt. The top bag is partly thawed out now, so I'll at least be able to mix that much dirt this week and get it into a pot.
That's all I have for this post, thanks for stopping by to check it out!
