Friday, March 20, 2009

Woo-Hoo Part One

When I looked at my seed flats this morning I was surprised and delighted to see that I had a baby broccoli raab! Apparently it's plant, water and stand back!

My neighbour's husband brought over a small plastic greenhouse, which I had intended to lie flat, but the design enables me to unzip the door from the top as well as the bottom, avoiding the wicked heat build-up which plagued my earlier greenhouse similar to this one.

We set it up against the wall, where it gets filtered sun most of the day, and I popped the flats on the top shelf. (I decided to take a bath, even though I'd pledged not to do so until transplant time.)

It's 8 C (46 F) outside, but we have a wicked wind. I put a thermometer in the greenhouse, tucked up in the shade of one of the flats, and it's read a steady 18 C - 64 F, which is probably a little cool for tomato seeds but it will probably be close to 20 C - 68 F by afternoon, which is poi-fict!

The one drawback you can't escape with this type of greenhouse is that although it has three generous shelves, the top one shades the lower two, so really only the top shelf is good for seedlings. This means when I get more flats planted I will turn it on its back, so there's no shading. Then it will function more like a cold-frame.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

one of my tenants has a little greenhouse like this. She put her outside plants in it for the winter, covered it in black plastic and left it on her porch in the sun. on the nice days, she opened it up to the sun. all her plants look wonderful. this should work well for you! Added plus...humongous cat not going to be laying on it!