Tips if you have a plastic greenhouse

So, if you have been reading this blog for a while you will remember when I got my greenhouse and placed it loosely against the wall:

Pride and joy in a nice warm corner of the patio.

And you will remember when this happened:

My very sad view one morning after the storm; those are my chillis all exploded everywhere inside it.

Anyway, I decided to attach the greenhouse down with tent pegs to ensure it could never been blown over again.

Pegged down the bottom of the greenhouse with alternating pegs.

Anyway, this has NOT been enough; I got back from a night away yesterday and found that the wind had got inside the greenhouse and lifted the poles out of their little seats (as bottom left of above picture) and ripped the plastic cover and it was all fallen over again. I was so upset I forgot to take a picture of it.

Anyway, I thought about this problem and came up with a solution which I would advise all of you to pay attention to if you have one of these things.

I bought some string and tied each layer together and to the base, which is pegged to the ground, so now it is solid from base to top and (hopefully) won't ever blow over ever again ever. Ever.

A detail of how I tied my greenhouse together.

Fully tied together greenhouse (you'll have to look pretty closely to see the string)

Anyway, this is a TOP TIP so I thought I should share it.

If you are interested, I got the greenhouses from this online store, they were very helpful.

Storm Disaster!

There was a storm last night, high winds and rain such that it woke us up howling through the windows and, as I lay there I thought "I wonder if the greenhouse is ok; nah it'll be fine I have it tight up against the house" so I stayed in my warm bed...

... what a bad mistake!

This is what I came down to this morning!!

This was taken at 6am this morning and I was out in my shorts in the pissing rain and howling wind! Talk about gutted.

The planter with the seedlings in had landed upside down and exploded soil EVERYWHERE! While I wanted to dive straight in and save what I could, work called (the perils of being a part time homesteader you see).


Thankfully I spent the day working out a solution (which is better than I would have achieved half naked, freezing and soaked to the skin at 6am) so we now have...

I have firmly pegged the base down onto the grass with alternating directionality on the pegs. Hopefully this will be proof against the winds of the Irish sea...

I have saved ten seedlings, though a couple are looking a little battered and unhappy; fingers crossed the recover fully.

The firmly pegged down greenhouse, more in the sun than the previous location, and also hopefully less auto-mobile.

What a shock it was this morning, think I've calmed down now.

Sowing parsnips and carrots, plus other progress AND a frog!

It was real April weather today; one minute absolutely baking hot and the next pissing down rain.  This is probably THE most "april"ish I've ever experienced.

It did settle down into the early evening though so I was able to get out into the garden and do some planting and other things.

This is a long update so I'll get onto it now.

First of all, huge HUGE thanks to my parents for buying me a lovely mini greenhouse (another is on it's way I hope) which I assembled:

Isn't that a beautiful little greenhouse.

The chillis are finally showing so I've moved them into little planters and put them in the greenhouse

Beautiful apple blossom :) i'm SO excited by this!

A little frog that appeared hopping over the garden - it's the brown blur bottom right if you can't spot it ;)

There he is. Hopping across the prepared ground for the carrots. He made his way into the bushes at the back of the garden and disappeared. I love nature :)

The dividing line between the parsnips (left) and the carrots (right) is the two halves of my broken spade... awesome.

Here be PARSNIPS! Each stick is set to delineate a row of seeds

Your very proud host in the process of planting the carrots; here I am selecting a stick to use as a place marker for a row of seeds.

Bradato Kopele (that'd be me then) digging a trench for the seeds.

Sowing the seeds - I'm REALLY doing the splits here - it's a wide part of the bed!

Trench completed, here I'm picking up small pinches of seed to scatter

In this shot you can see the TINY seeds that I'm scattering.

Finally covering the seeds over with about 15mm of soil.

The finished bed with carrots closest and the parsnip in the distance.

Each row is about 15-20 cm apart and contains about 30 seeds across the length.


I have also planted some tomatoes into a propagator but there is NOTHING to show you so I'll not bore you with a picture of soil in small compartments.

There is still NOTHING from the potatoes - I'm checking every day.

Oh yes, and the other evening after work I managed to get 40 mins in the garden post work and did all the weeding around the herb garden, apple tree and the veg patches with onions, garlic and shallots. Everything appears to be growing very well. I am VERY excited.