Now that I have the Greenhouse re-arranged it’s time to get some growing happening.

The first things I wanted to put in place were some tomatoes and beans on the climbing frames. I bought several bags of “Tomato and Veggie” potting mix on special and decided to use this in some tubs.

Last time I used the tubs I had some drainage holes near the bottom but the tubs kept drying out too quickly. I thought about constructing some proper wicking beds using the tubs but I wanted to use what I had on hand and didn’t really want to go through the extra effort of assembling the wicking bed. I needed a short-cut, a work-around, another way. So this is what I did.

I reasoned that, if the bottom of the potting mix was kept saturated and the plants were relatively shallow rooted, then they would have the advantage of the water wicking up from the bottom and also get oxygen because the top would not be saturated. Hopefully the potting mix a t the bottom would stay in good condition for the time it took to harvest the crops. Then it could be remixed or used as compost on the garden. It sounded reasonable to me anyway 🙂

So, it was just a matter of drilling some drainage holes relatively high on the tub at both ends to keep the additional water in the tub. After much gnashing of teeth and procrastinating, I settled on a little over 125mm from the bottom. Mainly because it was less than half way up the tub and also about one hand width, including thumb, which made it easy to measure.

Once the holes were drilled in both end of both tubs, it was off the greenhouse to fill the tubs with potting mix and place them in position. The only extra job I had to do was seal the original holes on one of the tubs with some hot melt glue and small squares of plastic

I planted a mix of climbing beans at the back followed by cherry tomatoes in the centre and spring onions at the front.

A quick soak until the water started to dribble out of the drainage holes and it was done.

It will interesting to see how well it works.

I’ll provide regular updates on the progress of the plants and we’ll see if the simplified construction does the job or if I have to go back to drawing board 🙂

I have had a rush of blood to the head recently with the onset of the cooler weather and some welcome time at home, and have been doing a bit of tidying up around the house and garden. After cleaning up some plants around the pergola and getting rid of some of the clutter, I turned my attention to the greenhouse and a job I had been putting off for some time

Our greenhouse has been in place for a couple of years now since a friend and I built it to pool our resources and use it as a shared facility (you can read about it here). It has been a real boon in extending the growing season for many plants and also for growing some plants that would be difficult otherwise. However. I have not really used it as well as I could partly because of the way it had been set up.

Originally, I had a section down the back of the greenhouse for my plants while my mate had the bulk for his Aloes. It was, and is, a good arrangement except for one thing. As the aloe plantings have expanded and grown it has been becoming more difficult to get to the back of the greenhouse on a regular basis. The area was being used less and less simply because it was hard to move things back and forth and to water etc. without getting caught on the spines or damaging some of the rare aloes. I had been thinking about re-arranging things to move my section to the front as it was the most used and now was the perfect opportunity as a few weeks ago my mate had taken a lot of aloes away to sell at a plant shows.

There was a lot grunting and heaving and lifting and carrying and sweeping and more sweeping and yet more sweeping. I must have swept out about 10kg of dirt, sand and weeds!

I also took the opportunity to recycle the table frame I rescued from the hard rubbish collection a while ago and a section of second hand mesh fence to build a propagation/potting table for the greenhouse.

Securing the mesh to the table frame

It turned out really well, and the only cost was the price of a few screws and a piece of scrap bracing strap for brackets.

I also rebuilt my climbing frame ready for some winter tomatoes and cucumber. We’ll see how well they turn out.

Everything has been moved now and it is so much easier to access the area and materials like potting mix, and water the existing plants.

It’s just a matter now of cleaning the pots and get planting 🙂