Midwest Gardening 2024: Mousehouse back to Greenhouse

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Our Mousehouse back to Greenhouse!

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Last year we had some real issues with mice and worse than that---the ticks that bred on them.  But with our disaster, the greenhouse barely got any attention. We threw in some annihilation bombs for the ticks and set traps, etc. for the mice. Mice can wiggle their way into anything. We thought we had it sealed up tight.

NOT!

We had a lovely day last Sunday in the 70's, so I dashed out to the greenhouse and began ripping everything out on the North and West sides...YUGH!

I had on a mask, eye gear, gloves, long sleeves, and my pants tucked into socks, just in case, and a long BBQ tongs and a long fork to fish out all the insulation and anything 'mousey' that I might come across.

I filled three huge contractor bags of insulation and refuse: cracked containers/pans/starter bins. 

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Here is where they were coming in---on the eastside, apparently a bit of wash-out outside made it open underneath and they dug under the 10" beams on that side. The fluffy fiberglass insulation was full of icky..yep, really disgusting. How can mice live snuggled in fiberglass. Amazingly the North wall, to the left, was done in some left over foam insulation originally...this hadn't been touched and that wall was intact, apparently MOUSE PROOF????

We had origninally attempted to use left over fiberglass insulation from the the garage to save money,---MISTAKE! 

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After stripping this wall of everything I sprayed the whole thing with a solution of bleach and soap! 

Hubby just picked up three-4'x8' huge pink 2" thick insulation foam sheets. $$$$$ it's $25 more a sheet than before the pandemic. YIKES. And, also some rubbery waterproof surface facing panels to cover it.

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The next warm day I will do this side! We will add some more gravely stuff to the floor and then complete the floor with patio blocks fit tightly together.  This should help eliminate the mice, ticks and anything else that wants to climb in and camp out.

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Emptying an 8x10 greenhouse...

Not a big deal you say----well THIS is what was on those two sides of the greenhouse---I will be drastically culling, recycling, and then scrubbing anything that goes back in. Right now everything is sprayed with cleaner with bleach. We got 1.5" of rain last night so that will help clean everything, also. Sunlight will to---and it will all be out in the yard this month as we morph the 

Mousehouse back into a greenhouse!

Hubby already started yesterday...he did get this far.

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The foam board is attached, glued and screwed, the plan is to trim it all in one swipe, when I help and hold a board as guide.

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Hubby went right over the existing north wall in order to make the corners sealed and the walls even. Once the white wall sheeting is on it will be trimmed out, also closing off more ways for mice to camp in.

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We removed the shelving braces on the eastside to work on the walls and floor, but they will easily be replaced once the new floor is in. Patio blocks will also provide seasonal warmth and still allow for natural drainage, since I do spray when watering our big trays of plants.

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More stuff to go through. The large planters all get used, though we have given many away in the last few years. I think we have 8-10 watering cans. I will line them all up when I'm sorting, LOL.

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I'm going to make room for garden tools also this time around.

 Luckily we have a month, before I will be moving plants to the greenhouse, maybe by Easter if everything goes to plan! 

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I'm looking forward to enjoying working in there again. 

Eventually it should look like this again, some older photos of the greenhouse at it's prime!

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Full of plants, and organized and not cluttered. 

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We have Water Hose hookup at the sink- which drains to the garden.

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The greenhouse has 5 windows and a screen/storm door which give great air circulation and an overhead fan that exhausts the ceiling when it's too hot.

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Here's hoping for a few healthy tomato plants just like this in a month or so. Tomato planting really needs to wait until the last half of May at the earliest here in Chicagoland.

I can't wait!!!!!!

HOW'S YOUR 

GARDEN 

PREP and Planning GOING? 

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Midwest Gardening February 2020

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February 2020

Well, gardening in the upper Midwest is still just a dream. 

Here is our pond. Sunlight doesn't even touch this area yet, this photo was taken at 12 Noon today, a sunny day. The sun is still so low, it never creeps over the pitch of the garage. The light you see is the reflection off our huge kitchen windows--bouncing sunlight down on the ground.

And, still we dream of Spring. 

So far we have had little snow and mildish temps. 

Lots of freezing and thawing, rain mixed with snow, then rain again. This week we have a 0 degrees in the forecast and snow---hard to have both, but we will see.

I had to send my two herb planters outside. 

All that was alive was the rosemary and that also began to give up. I will have to totally replace the soil in these, I think all the nutrients were washed out or used up by the exuberance of the plantings, and our constant rain last year.

Planters that have excessive water, literally wash their nutrients out. Think how many times you dumped saucers last year, or gave up on saucers. 

One week ago, Hubby started seeds in the south window of our kitchen. Tomatoes, Chinese Eggplant,  Mixed Peppers all take forever to germinate. But, we had quite a few days of sun this week. Hubby currently uses pellets which I'm not fond of---but they do wick up the moisture and keep the seedlings started.

TIP: I'm not fond of pellets because if you follow directions and transplant them straight into the ground, the roots never break through--and that casing is forever around a root bound plant. We now cut them and totally remove the fabric with a scissors when we transplant into large cups. Usually when the plants are 2-4" high.

Here is our East window. Which gets about 2 hours of sun in the morning--but this increases every day. Eventually we will fill the top of the credenza with more plants and some shelves. 

Yellow Jubilee Tomatoes left and Red Cherry Large.  Then we did a container of broccoli to the right.

It will be another long month before we can plant the different types of squash, chard, and some summer squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and pickles. I'll directly plant lettuces, and onions in planters on the front porch as soon as it begins to warm up in April. Sunflowers will begin in deep cups when we move out to the greenhouse.

You can see we buy seeds from everywhere! 

We have given up on the plastic small greenhouses---it is just too windy here. Last year we draped heavy plastic around two portable scaffolding units, added a couple of shelves and even a heater, as we had planted in the house so early.  

Our spring was so slow in coming, and it was so cold and wet---the new greenhouse just wasn't completed in time to use!

Observation Note: 

We moved here in 1984. The first few years we tilled the garden in March, and had cold plants in the ground (beets, carrots, cabbage, onions) the first weeks of April. 

 The last four years---we have been lucky if we haven't hard-frosted after June 1. I lost all my pumpkin, sunflower, and zucchini mounds to frost that went deep enough they didn't make it up. We had planted the week of the 20th May.

How much has your planting schedule been effected by our changing climate? 

We keep the pellets/pods covered 

until the seedlings, push them off, LOL. 

Hubby checks the moisture each day, and a small amount of water is added when needed.

Crazy, but in one week, broccoli was up! Actually they came up Sunday morning! Cruciferous veggies, like cold temps so the East window should be fine for them.

It's hard to imagine all our vegetables coming from seeds. Any extra plants we have get passed on to family and friends. But it isn't just about vegetables, is it? It was too wet here for large onions, 

so I had to purchase those to make pickle relish! But we had a huge crop of pickles last year.

We plant more than one type of everything. Each variety wants different conditions, so something should be successful.

Soon, I will  start coleus again, only much earlier than last year. I will do a whole tray of these directly into a pan of soil. Then they will be transplanted into large cups, later. 

This is what they grew to, last year, before I found homes for all of them. The tiny pink pots were Icelandic poppies, that really did much. I will see if they managed to survive over the winter, but with the freezing and thawing, I don't have a lot of hope.

2019 Homegrown Coleus, and Hostas (left) started from a package of roots. ($5.97 for 12 starts and they were slow, but if they made the winter, it will be a great savings). I also start Caladiums. Our entire backyard is shady so having those plants really helps the budget.

I also plant trays of marigolds---which go very well with our gold/burgundy home. Besides the BEES love marigolds and they are hearty and last far into the Fall. 

These are my 10-12" high marigolds that spread two feet wide and almost two feet high You are looking at no more than 3 homegrown seed plants. These I will plant in trays of dirt the beginning of April, and they will be ready to transplant into the ground in late May, early June.

2019-Here are transplanted plants in the NEW greenhouse! We really didn't finish the greenhouse early enough to use except at the tail end of 2019 Spring. We will try and move plants out there by April 1st this year, with a quartz heater on in the evenings and a temperature gauge we can watch from inside. 

It's not unusual for a 45 degree day to send the greenhouse to 80-90 degrees or more. We added a  fan and vents in the peaks, screened windows and door, for adjusting the temperature. We will see how it goes, before moving the plants in. Hubby worked very hard wedging all sorts of insulating foam in all the crevices last Fall, we hope it will be tight and work for our Spring season!

I think we will have to go to the Botanic Gardens next week to smell warm earth!!!

What are your gardening plans? 

Are you going to try anything NEW this YEAR?

Thank you for any and all comments.

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Sandi 

oldnewgreenredo

Green House: Lemons to Lemonade

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We have become adept at making lemonade out of lemons around here.

Two weeks ago, I posted April Midwest Gardening-not so pretty! and showed you all the damage and how far behind Chicagoland is from Spring. Since then we have had two 5-6" snowfalls, an icestorm and over 5" of rain in the last week. 

Our NEW 8'x10' Greenhouse was wrecked over the winter--so hubby decided to work off the heavy tubular frame and use it for a new greenhouse--more stable then the 1 year old UV destroyed fabric used in the zippered greenhouses. (that company is out of business)

He's been dodging rain deluges, snow and wind and managed to get this far. He built an exo-skeleton of treated wood over the existing tubular frame. This REDO was done by meticulously drilling through the pipes and bolting the boards on. Technically this green house is portable, as the only thing attached to the ground is the metal frame which can be unbolted. 

Maybe six guys will be able to move it, lol.

With our huge snow accumulations and drifting here in windy Chicago-land, he chose corrugated aluminum for about a third of the way up, all the way around. We chose basement windows which open from the outside. We've been rolling up plastic canvas windows for over 10 years---so this is just as easy.

The greenhouse is straight-but the ground slopes. Hubby put in four basement windows and in the back, one sash window. All this was designed around our shelving and work areas. A storm/screen door will be used on the front. The ground beams were put in a year ago as was the gravel, sand, pea gravel floor. This is designed to drain water into the ground at GREEN thing to do.

 Our excessive rainfall, has been so huge they have asked people to forego washing machines and unnecessary showering to help the already taxed drainage systems. I don't ever remember that happening before.

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Do you ever roam the big box hardware stores looking for something that doesn't exist?

Hubby used some left-over brown roofing flashing---he trimmed and added a bend to create a waterproof surface for the corrugated plastic panels to sit on. Water from the inside or outside will just roll out. All the trim will be painted brown outside, to match the house. Brown windows would have been a custom order and would have cost over double.

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From inside you can see the framing around the windows. This side is all ready for the clear panels which are easy to install. 

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This looks metal looks critter proof, but of course they can simply dig underneath and have a nice home for the winter. I'm hoping to try and grow late fall crops in here---fresh lettuce and maybe a few tomatoes and peppers too.

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Hubby took these photos today, May 9th and you can see the neighbors perrenicals are barely out of the ground.

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Hubby is improvising as he goes along, tweaking and making changes. I'm hoping I can she-shed it a bit---we will see, if nothing else it is very 'Farm' looking. But the point is to be able to grow our own plants from seed.

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The flashing is brilliant----making do with what you have---we had some left over from the roof repair, last year.

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We know there may be some gaps when all the panels are on---but we will work with that when we get there! Our extra length of patio lights is right above and in front of the greenhouse. Electricity is 

just a post away--so we can use a heater if necessary.

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Now if the weather will only cooperate, hubby could get this done. Hopefully on Mother's day the boys can help with the roof panels!  He's doing a great job and soon we will be able to move our plants from our improvised plastic hut off the front porch. 

Is  this going to be winter-proof? I'm sure some caulk and maybe some expanding insulation foam will be utilized. After all-WE-are the 'McGyvers' as my husband calls it.

HOW's YOUR SPRING LIST COMING??? 

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How it Started! NEW Greenhouse is Done!

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~Spring is elusive in the Midwest~

This is a repost from 2019 

on how we made our greenhouse!

Hubby finished the greenhouse with a little help from a friend and took some photos for me to share. I still can't get out and about---and probably won't for a month. He moved our plants out there yesterday before the bad storms hit the Chicago area, again.

My last few posts have been on the disaster our ruined purchased greenhouse suffered, but we are resourceful and decided to take the metal frame and build around it with wood and corrugated clear panels. 

Hubby found out that cutting the poly panels with a shears was easier than with saws. The hardest construction issue was drilling holes in the metal frame to bolt the wood too. Technically this entire structure is removable, piece by piece. 

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Today is in the low fifties, so the plants are quite happy inside their new home. I can't wait to use this in the Fall to prolong our growing season.

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The windows open from the outside, except for the door and the sash frame in the back.

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The metal on the bottom is to fight the snow we have in the winter...hubby designed his own flashing from some leftover roof flashing that he bent to fit the ledge over the ledge above the corrugated metal. 

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He used a screen storm door for the entrance. The long flip out windows are basement storm windows with screens on the inside.

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once all the trim is painted brown..I hope to do some cute stuff on the outside and inside. I have lots of vintage goodies that will work.

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Here you can see the backside. The space behind is actually a utility easement of 6 feet, Nothing permanent can be placed there.

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The wood shelves are from our old greenhouse. 

This building is 8x10 now and very high, more than enough room for us to plant.

We have a sink in here that will be hooked up by hose--and drain into the garden. We will put a moveable drain hose to direct the outflow where we want it to go.

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Finally the garden is coming to life. These photos were taken on May 15--and we are so far behind again this year.

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We had a couple of inches of rain yesterday---so the garden won't get tilled until it dries out-again. 

I hope Hubby got all the equipment put away.  

I will post a list of materials and midwest prices, once Hubby gets it done! PS the frame from the defunct company I can't put a price on, original greenhouse was over $450.00. I'm sure this will last a lot longer than a year now

Maybe something with a lemons theme for here...

SMILES...In our Lemonade Greenhouse.

HOW's YOUR SPRING LIST COMING??? 

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