Well, we've been a little busy here, but we've been meaning to get a post up about our beautiful new greenhouse.
Last year we applied for a grant for a greenhouse. Unfortunately, we did not get it -- or so we thought. When my Aunt Kathy heard that we didn't get it, she generously offered to fund our greenhouse project, and asked only that we name the greenhouse "Anna-Mae" -- my grandmother's nickname.
Sadly, my grandmother passed away earlier this spring, the same week the greenhouse went up. My grandma wrote in beautiful calligraphy, which was the inspiration for the style of the sign painted by Kristen. My grandmother was a very patient, caring woman, and I like to be reminded of those qualities when working on our delicate little plants and young trees.
But we had a bit of work to do before we could get it up. Here's me digging the foundation for the greenhouse. Our land isn't exactly level, and we're too stubborn to hire anyone or rent machinery, so there I am. My arms hurt just looking at that pile of dirt. There were some big rocks in there, too.
Here's Chief Engineer Kristen working on one of our piers. The greenhouse is anchored into the ground with six concrete piers going about 2' into the ground, with steel stakes running through the middle of them and going down an additional 1' or so. On the sides are rot-resistant recycled plastic lumber for the sill plates. The "Anna-Mae" isn't going anywhere!
We dug trenches in the bottom for drainage, put in gravel, bolted the sills down onto the piers, and Kristen put together a very pretty brick walkway through the center. You can see from this angle why we needed to dig down a bit to make it level.
Here's Kristen and friend & mentor Jay Wild working on the base. Jay was a big help getting the greenhouse up. Since our seedlings were taking up space in his greenhouse at the time, I can't blame him!
The walls are made of 8 and 10mm twinwall polycarbonate -- very heavy-duty stuff that will hopefully last a long time in addition to providing premium insulation. Early on we decided that temperature control and durability were the main features we wanted.
Here I am puttering around with some of our hazelnut trees. My grandma really liked red geraniums, so we put some pots of those to either side of the door.
The greenhouse will allow us to germinate, graft, and chip-bud hazels under controlled conditions, and it also has shelving that will allow us to start vegetable seedlings without using much space. And because it's small, we probably won't use a lot of energy heating it. It's really the perfect greenhouse for what we want to do.
