Posts by:
It is late August and I am chatting with my daughter who lives in Northern Alberta, Canada. Her outside garden has never looked so good because of the heat and regular rains. But she is wishing she could get another month on either end of the growing season.
What is the best feature of your existing greenhouse? And what would you change if you could do it all over again and build a new greenhouse from scratch?
Theses are...
The peak of summer brings the best of all worlds for the greenhouse gardener. Early tomatoes, the first zucchini and loads of strawberries. But there is another thing summer brings. The chance to start winter vegetables in your greenhouse.
If you watch old re-runs on Netflix you have seen how fashions and styles have changed dramatically since Seinfeld was filmed in the 1990s. The same is true for food – especially lettuce.
I first wrote about “novel” mesclun greens (mixed lettuce) in 1995. Since then, they have become so popular, that bagged lettuce is the only lettuce most people know. And this is too bad because lettuce greens or bagged greens are really just immature greens like kale and lettuce leaves. So, for something completely novel, why not go back to the future? Grow full-size head lettuce in your Greenhouse Garden this year.
Most people don’t remember life before the small bags of lettuce leaves so commonly sold now at big box stores and local farm markets. But if you want the crunch of lettuce in a BLT sandwich or if you want to replace Pita bread with a Keto-friendly lettuce leaf wrap for lunch, then start growing your own heads of lettuce this season.
Lennie tracked me down at a party. “It’s my cauliflowers,” she sighed. “They are small and button-like instead of big like at the store.”
When I moved homes and built a new greenhouse, I was in for quite a surprise. The natural soil on my new lot is sand. Pure, yellow sand. This means it drains really well. It also means it does not hold nutrients to feed my plants.
Showing off my arugula (also known as rocket) on Instagram leads to a lot of questions about my greenhouse and what I currently have growing.
Nature hates a gap. That’s why weeds fill in every nook and cranny available to them outdoors. Sprinkling desirable seeds outside as the snow thaws on the south side of your home or Greenhouse Garden this spring lets you copy nature’s best efforts. Inside your greenhouse, scatter seeds on top of pots or flats. A light dusting of soil and a sheet of glass laid flat over trays keeps the humidity high until the seeds grow.
The doorbell rings and the Purolator truck pulls away as I open the door. A shoebox-sized package is waiting on my step: my greenhouse bugs have arrived!
In my region an atmospheric river flooded out roads, rails and farms. This probably seems pretty minor compared to areas affected by cyclones and hurricanes but one thing is certain: there has never been a better time to own a greenhouse.
-2.jpg?width=45&name=unnamed%20(4)-2.jpg){kind=small}