Friends who are moving out of the country said we could have their miniature greenhouse. Having assembled a makeshift one from old windows and attic beams, I wasn't about to say no. It needed some dis-assembly to get in it as far as the car, and then we realised that the size of the back panel - composed of solid pine beams and tongue-and-groove boards - meant it just wasn't going to go in, and that was it. So out came a hammer, and I took it apart, plank by plank, until it fitted.
Re-assembly therefore meant starting with remaking the back panel, and that started with taking out the rusty staples it had been put together with. Between a hammer to knock them flat in places, and a pliers to get them out where possible, I eventually got them all dealt with. And then on to the assembly. There's something very pleasing about working outdoors with wood on a sunny day.
Here's the final result:
That's now sitting at the back of the house, holding two tomato plants (one starting to groan with green tomatoes, the other only starting to produce a few; both have lots more flowers), a jalapeno pepper (flowers, no fruit yet, but I'm hopeful), and a small grape-vine, which we thought was dead, but has started to produce some small leaves again. Ideally, I think, it should actually be in soil, with a wall to climb on, but it's very small right now, and I think a year's coddling before we expose it to the outside world might be good for it.
One thing I would like to get would be a couple of small thermometers, which I'd mount where they can be seen in this and in the makeshift one. I reckon this will be hotter than the recycled one, so that gives three stages of heat - outside, recycled greenhouse, and good greenhouse, in increasing heat.
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