The Greenhouse Build

This thing… sigh. It’s been a lot, of everything. Hard work, obsession, learning opportunities, constraints, symbolism, acceptance, and so many other feelings and emotions I’m just now starting to digest and process.

I have dreamed, breathed and cried greenhouse for almost a year now. I talked about it at length with my therapist, and my family, and defended the primal and powerful NEED I have had for it since we decided we are moving to the country.

I settled on a Planta greenhouse early, and decided I prefer their less popular Sigma model for my needs. It is the single most expensive thing I have ever bought myself, and I could have chosen far cheaper options, but I HAD to have that one.

I don’t think it’s about the greenhouse

I couldn’t explain why. Again, it was visceral, and when I think about it now I have to admit my NEED for it came from the same little place my NEED to cover my entire arm with tattoos in less than a year did. I am here, alive, reasonably ok, and I’m not sure what will happen in a month, or a year. I am cheating time. Or it feels like it, constantly. Rather than keeping a bucket list, I find something tangible I could put on one, and I do it, because it feels I NEED to do it, because it brings me a sense of completion, or accomplishment, within constraints I didn’t expect to have at this point in my life. That has been the greenhouse for me.

If you’re new to my blog, I wrote a post a while ago about my super rare Neuro Behcet’s disease, which has impacted my brain and left me with permanent “mild” permanent brain damage. I now take meds that have so far stopped the disease from progressing and have made me “stable”, but I could flare again, anytime, without warning, and there is no way to predict what damage another flare would do.

I am so so grateful for the parts of my brain that have remained intact, and I’ve learned to marvel at the malfunctions, and take them in stride. The human brain is bewildering, and my self-awareness has remained unscathed. Therapy has helped me come to accept the misfires.

My condition leaves me with a lot of time to analyze myself, and I have learned to appreciate the inner workings of my faulty brain.

Slow build

I struggled with many little things I took for granted while building this greenhouse. The cold was the worst, and most constant. My muscles seize in the cold and sometimes take days to release, so I worked in our fire-heated garage as long as I could, and the rest of the assembly happened in small spurts on sunny days.

My fingers don’t have the dexterity they once had, and multiple tiny nuts were dropped for each successful screw. My brain inverted many of the instructions, and several pieces were initially assembled or screwed in backwards, and I had to backtrack once I realized it, or became stuck.

A strange little quirk I uncovered came when I had to reach one arm over my head to secure a nut onto a bolt without being able to see the exit hole of the bolt on the other side of the panel. My brain couldn’t reconcile the distance between my two hands, and I couldn’t do it. The best way I can explain it is using a simple test my neurologist makes me perform, which is to touch my finger to my nose. I’ve never had trouble doing that, but if my eyes were open and somehow I couldn’t see or feel my nose, I think I would not be able to use my brain to help my finger locate it.

It was supposed to be a 2 person build, as many pieces needed to be held in place while another person secured them. I used a tall ladder as a reasonable stand in, which worked well except for an unexpected gust of wind early on, which knocked over one of the door panels. I managed to catch it mid-flight but a sharp clip cut through my overalls and leg as it fell, leaving me with a scar that will always remind me of my greenhouse.

The greenhouse instructions say it takes two people somewhere between 8-12 hours to complete the greenhouse build. It took me many, many times more than that, but I did it, slowly, and on my own.

The meaning of the greenhouse

My life is smaller now, but I am happy. We moved to the country to be closer to nature, to live differently, smaller, maybe, or not, but fulfilled. I love being here, and I love any excuse to have my hands in dirt.

I took up gardening as a hobby, largely because it’s pretty much the only thing I have found I can do at my speed, along with making art. I lean toward plants more than art these days because drawing makes my hands hurt more than dirt. When I find ways to incorporate art or creativity into my random garden projects I feel full. Somewhere along the way these things combined have morphed into some form of extreme gardening. It’s a small existence compared to my old self, but despite everything I am really, truly happy, and grateful to be alive.

The greenhouse became this tangible threshold for me, which I felt a need to cross. Last year, we moved to our new place on November 12th, and I had it in my head that I NEEDED to buy and assemble said greenhouse before it snowed. NEEDED. My therapist asked me what will happen if I don’t manage to do it, and I conceded that no one, including myself, would implode if I didn’t get it done before winter, but I was going to do it.

We had just moved and Colin had an kids’ bedrooms and a basement to build, but I HAD to have the greenhouse. I promised I would do it on my own, not take him away from the basement, and if I didn’t get it done before the snow came I would be ok, as long as I tried. I said this out loud, promised my therapist, but I don’t think I ever entertained the option of not finishing it.

I managed to do it, slowly, bit my bit, and beat the snow by a couple of days. This was my view all winter long. A reminder of an accomplishment, all on my own, which stretched me to my breaking point, and showed me that I don’t always break doing hard things.

Spring tweaks and finishing touches

My beautiful shiny Planta greenhouse sat empty ALL winter. We have been monitoring temps and the greenhouse is consistently warm, some days even hot, when the sun shines, but rapidly drops to freezing cold as soon as night hits. I wasn’t ready to consider growing anything in it this winter, though it is something we will absolutely strive for next winter. This year, all I wanted was to have the greenhouse ready for planting in early spring, and to see how I can use it, unheated.

I finally went back in the greenhouse and started tinkering a few weeks ago, to get the inside ready. I have 4 windows to install and I have so far installed one of them, part way, and paused on that because it’s a very long, drawn out, frustrating experience that requires a level of manual dexterity I don’t have.

I also screwed up building the window frames and have to take them all apart now and put them back together. I did get one done, and I know how to fix my mistakes, but I will take my time doing the other three, and likely avoid it until it becomes so hot and unbearable in the greenhouse that I have no choice.

The garden beds on a budget

Last week I assembled some very cheap and flimsy planting beds, and filled them with the best growing mediums I could on a tight budget.

That part was really fun actually, and involved my own version of a Hügelkultur bed.

Part 1, collecting sticks and logs

Part 2, very old stored Alfa Alfa and Timothy bales of hay sold to us for $2 a bale!!!!

Part 3, over wintered bags of leaves collected from the neighbourhood last fall (if you read this please save your leaves or grass clippings for us)

Part 4, aged animal droppings, graciously donated to us by our lovely neighbors, as we don’t yet have our own source (but it’s coming…). There’s some rabbit, chicken and alpaca poop mixed in there, also aged so the smell is mostly gone

Part 5, a mix of our own worm castings some green compost bits we saved up for the occasion, then a quick mix and a good soak

Part 6, our top layer of soil, mixed in with a single bag of biosol per bed

There is a science to making good soil, and I try to follow along with science where I can, but I am also budget conscious and find that I can make do with a lot by collecting natural materials and layering them in place using common sense where I want to enrich soil as a starting point, and building on those beds through the plants I choose, and amending the soil further with purposeful home made compost in future years.

These two beds in my greenhouse are my starting point. The sticks and logs at the bottom will eventually break down, and the leaves and hay in there will likely do that faster, but in the meantime I can start to plant in the small layer of soil and compost at the top of the beds, and hope that my plant roots grow down at a similar rate to my middle layers decomposing, in which case the soil should provide all the nutrients they need.

I’m still a couple of weeks away from starting to transition the insanity that is my indoor grow room to the greenhouse, but in the meantime the beds are ready when the weather is, so I am ahead.

Greenhouse Shelving

This week I finally started working on the shelves.

I had struggled with a simple design for shelving as I contemplated multiple options this winter. I had requirements.

Mostly I wanted something I can easily pack up and fold away. I also need very strong shelving, able to withstand a high load without bending.

I was lucky to pick up some industrial wire shelving for a steal from a marketplace ad, intended to be used for industrial shelving, like this:

I tried looking for the metal racks as well, but those were so far out of my price range, so I decided on wood.

With a lot of visionary help from the engineer brain in our family, I finally settled on this very high tech design:

I did have to ask for help at the end, also also entrusted Colin to provide me with precise measurements I did not trust myself to record, but otherwise I managed to create the racks 99% on my own. (probably more that 89%, realistically).

This is how the prototype turned out:

It was perfect, and with 3 more, one entire half of my greenhouse has now maximized every inch of possible space use, granting me 3 huge surface levels for potted plants. I am counting the floor beneath the second shelf, as I consider that a perfect location for growing shade plants

Mission Complete

This is my finished greenhouse.

There were many screw ups along the way, and quite a few discreet rescues from Colin when I messed things up or just didn’t have the strength to do things, but it is pretty much done. I still need to spray some insulating foam, and install 3 more windows, but yesterday I finished the inside shelving, cleaned it, and used it for the first time.

This morning I have brought all my winter sown pots inside it, as this will give them a bit of an early start to spring, while I figure out how and when to safely start to bring my indoor seedlings into this space, and give my family back our solarium.

The greenhouse carries a lot of meaning, symbolism, power and confidence for me, and I can’t describe the feelings it stirred when I stepped inside it, empty yet ready and waiting for me today, proof that I am still able to do hard things. Because I am. Just much, much slower than I used to. Now I will nap.