Our Little Greenhouse

We were so inspired by all the great food from our CSA last summer.  As a family, we decided that we wanted to have a garden.   The kids & I talked about our garden all winter.  Thanks to Pinterest, I was full of ideas.  But, I did some good ol' research at the library & we came up with our game plan.  A raised bed w/ a PVC network over the top to support greenhouse plastic or netting, with the option to add a trellis if we wanted anything that climbed.

The building of the raised bed came first &, thankfully, my dad was able to come up & help.  AMP &  LaLa help Grandpa dig, lay down sand, pour dirt, rake & of course offer lots of distractions.  I was able to help a bit, but my attention was mostly focused on keeping the twins out of the way & happy.  After the first weekend we had the raised bed full of dirt & potential.

The following week, the kids & I collected supplies for the greenhouse - lots of PVC & a painter's 2 mil painting plastic.  Specific greenhouse plastic was not available here, so we had to improvise.  I roped my husband into sawing all the PVC for me.  As I shuffled out of the house from my accidental nap with the twins, Jarrod had the PVC assembled & installed on the bed.  Then of course the weather got quite chilly again, which meant waiting longer to get our seeds in the ground.  

After a week & a half of waiting, I got so antsy.  It wasn't even a nice day out.  Bundled up, the 5 of us braved the chilly wet weather, thanking Jesus that at least it wasn't too windy.  As the twins played, AMP, LaLa & I carefully unfolded & laid out the plastic, wrapped up the raised bed much like you would a present too big to lift off the ground.  We used some packing tape on the sides & stakes at the bottoms.  SUCCESS!!  

Now to plant!  Out came the packets of seed:  snap peas, bush beans, pole beans, variety lettuce, cilantro, basil & tomatoes.  We quickly planted our seeds, watered & got ourselves back in.  

It's been about a week & a half since then & when the sun is shining, it is quite warm under the plastic.  I think I see lettuce & basil sprouts, but it could just be weeds from the garden soil we used.  We are anxious to see more growth & enjoy peeking every couple days to see the progress.

One bonus about the PVC framework is that we can remove the plastic, recover w/ netting & move it to the front yard over our future strawberry patch.  But first we need remove the remaining grass & acquire some strawberry plants.