Log in

View Full Version : Weekend Project


pmurphy
08-04-2013, 06:23 PM
I thought I would share with you my weekend project - something that would take full advantage of current "seasonally" used space and turn it into year round growing.

To give you a little background, I live in Vancouver, BC Canada where our winters are not usually too bad but can be very wet. I am really into pushing the limits on exotics, especially if it is edible. And we have an 8ftx16ft vegetable garden in our backyard that is in use from about mid-May to the end of September, otherwise it is empty - and what I consider - wasted space.
This past weekend I decided to combine my love of exotics and the vegetable garden so that it can be used as a dry, frost-free space.....I got a hold of a "hoop" greenhouse and enclosed the garden. Now I have a frost-free 9.5ftx16ft area that is 8ft in height.

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=53964&size=1

As we built this over the existing garden some things got a little trampled but otherwise even the corn is liking the extra warmth right now (it was 23C outside when the picture was take and the thermometer is correctly reading 30C inside).

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=53963&size=1

And not only is there space for working/growing at the front but we even managed to incorporate the existing hose that was used for watering the garden and hooked it up so that there is water available inside (there is 3ft of space in front of the hose reel).

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=53962&size=1

In case you're wondering, that is a 6ftx8ft poly panel greenhouse behind it, and the umbrella is shading an African Tulip tree and a Star Apple that I recently aquired and are not used to sunlight.

Now I just have to get in there and clean it up/re-organize so that we can continue to grow our vegetables and then store the bananas, palm trees and citrus trees during the winter........beats bringing them all inside the house :)

Keep 'em growing!

Illia
08-04-2013, 06:31 PM
I'd love to see how your projects, especially all your started seeds, will turn out and how updates go. :) You're just a little north of me and sound very much like me. I'm trying my best and pushing the limits on exotic and edible, and am always expanding with new things. I currently have a large greenhouse filled with stuff and it looks similar to yours, except I'm too poor to fill the flooring with cement or gravel, and nearly all my plants are surrounded by thick jungles of various species of beans. Great natural fertilizer, food, and space filler.

pmurphy
08-04-2013, 07:38 PM
I'd love to see how your projects, especially all your started seeds, will turn out and how updates go. :) You're just a little north of me and sound very much like me. I'm trying my best and pushing the limits on exotic and edible, and am always expanding with new things. I currently have a large greenhouse filled with stuff and it looks similar to yours, except I'm too poor to fill the flooring with cement or gravel, and nearly all my plants are surrounded by thick jungles of various species of beans. Great natural fertilizer, food, and space filler.

Thanks, it'll be interesting to see how well this works during the winter - I figure we'll add another layer of poly as protection/insulation and then over winter some of the hardier exotics.....the real exotics (papaya, sapodilla, soursop etc) will either come into the house or stay in another double-walled poly greenhouse (not the one behind this "experiment") that we keep heated.

FYI, I got my cassabanana seeds on ebay out of Jasper, Tennessee
:08: