Category Archives: indoor greenhouses

Spring 2024

May 1, 2024: Premier voyage of the greenhouse! Propagation has been in full swing since January 2024. One little setback delayed my peppers for a month, however I am no longer frantic as I have a greenhouse to extend the season as long as necessary! The crops shown above are my Asclepius groups “Hello Yellow” and Orange tuberosa and the middle Common Milkweed. happy with the progress so far.

Managing the Temperature in the Greenhouse is going to be the challenge this season. I prefer my veggies to be full grown before they are “cooked” with high temps! The Palma Twin greenhouse fan with thermostat has kept a steady heat all winter long allowing my hydrangeas, yucca, kale and parsley to successfully survive. Newly propagated plants have been put in the greenhouse as soon as they showed they were sturdy enough to stand temperature shifts and real sunlight rather than grow lights

Red bush beans are already producing! So far I am very pleased with the color and sturdiness of the plants. I have been supplementing with fish fertilizer, something I have finally understood, that its “OK” to use fertilizer in potted plants. Plants in pots are dependent on us for nutrition, it was something that I was reluctant to try, but now I understand that there just isn’t the same soil dynamic as there is when you have worms and other organisims crawling around.

Cucumbers are doing well. For the past few years I have not been happy with the harvest, we will see how I can change this in 2024. I may just leave some in the greenhouse to compare how they thrive in there vs an outside plot. Every year is a new adventure.

This year we pruned the fruit trees again. Last year they shot up and I would say doubled in size! We need to keep them manageable and on the small side, after all they are dwarf varieties and should not be allowed to get too large. We sprayed horticultural spray application #1 and will continue following sprays to keep the fruit healthy. Last year was very successful as there were no bugs. The apples had spots on their skin due to the leaf-heavy centers, now we know that air circulation is key.

Nature never fails to surprise. After pruning the trees, I had used some heavier branches to support the side of my huglekulture bed. I have notice that it started to grow! Totally unexpected, and not so sure that it is really going to grow, but I am happy to see is sprouting nonetheless !

More to come…

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Fall 2023 Garden

January 9, 2024

This fall may have been the end of the outdoor growing season, but the start of the indoor and greenhouse garden! My long awaited greenhouse kit arrived and was erected in late September, so rather than growing from seed, I have opted to winter-over some kale, yucca, peppers and my Banana trees. I have started some seeds indoors, and have moved some potted up broccoli rabe and arugula out to the greenhouse to see how it does. The Temp in the greenhouse is a steady 56 degrees with the addition of a thermostatically controlled heater/fan .

On January 1, I planted some cayenne pepper and Italian flat onion seeds and they were germinating nicely…until last night. I usually clamp the humidity dome shut to prevent critters from snacking on sprouts, but having forgottn to do that I now have to replant and start again.

My Root cellar attempt was…just OK. The temp around the carrots and green squash was a steady 61 degrees, I believe that is far too warm. I had to cook and freeze so I didn’t loose my squash harvest. Back to the drawing board on that! In the meantime I did successfully preserve most of the Tomatoes, apples, peaches and grapes! Peppers are drying and hanging in my kitchen, Bill has created some amazing hot sauces with recipes for next season in the works. I plan on working on my preservation techniques for 2024 garden. Green beans, although very prolific have been a bit of a disappointment. Dragon beans (which I had last season) were great, however the heirloom green beans I planted this season were harvested and frozen with the “string” intact! I should have taken it out before freezing…now I know.

Always learning. Each season is a new lesson!

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Slowly inching outside

The weather this weekend has been incredible. Sunny and in the 60’s make it a perfect day to start cleanup and startup of Garden 2023. Pulled out a couple of good reference books (Toulouse took a bite out of my Square foot Gardening book when he was a puppy)

So I have implemented a few tried and true concepts so far in 2023 garden plan. I would like to get more out of each garden bed so I am going to square-foot with companion planting and see how this works in addition to succession

Still have the rest of the seedlings to put in, and technically Mothers day is the frost free date, I am taking my chances putting these in as it is, so that’s as far as I will go today.

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February

Had a few big snow storm threats but all ended as nothing but an inch or two at best, not a snowshoeing season at all this year here in Westchester.

Outside all is fresh and crisp above, but below all is alternate crunchy and soggy, not a good time to walk on soil but sure is nice to clear your head of the winter cobwebs!

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Preparing for Fall

August 25, 2018

The weather has finally been cooperative! Beautiful 77degree day, clear sky, great day to weed the garden and start preparing for the latter half of the summer. I repotted the Lemon tree, and I pulled my Rosemary and Sage and put them in pots to bring inside for the winter. I do hope they survive!

I harvested the carrots and the beets from my indoor greenhouse. Pretty disappointing overall! IMG_8580I have heard of MicroGreens, but I have produced Micro Carrots! Actually, they weren’t all this size, IMG_8578but they were tiny, smaller than “baby carrots”. My beets had NO beets at all! just greens…which were pretty tasty, but, like the carrots a disappointment.

My project for the greenhouse is: 1) to figure out why the root vegetables were such a failure. 2) to figure out why things take so long to mature when I have heat, light, and humidity.  The soil is dense, maybe it should be lighter? more vermiculite?

Bees/waspsIMG_8572/ and other flying things have started to populate the Mason bee house. Happy to see life in it since I moved it from a different part of the garden. Bees have been more prevalent in the garden later in the season, although my roses did not bloom quite the way they did last season, there was a lot of activity.

So there still is much to do, weeding, mulching and marking the locations of plants so next spring there is less mystery is what is coming up.

 

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Need garden advice

Hi All,

If you have stopped in on my page GardenSpot you can see the progress of my indoor greenhouse. The problem I am having is everything is growing MICRO. I don’t want microgreens, micro-beans, micro-lettuce. I have a great fungi thing going on with the organic raised bed soil I used, I add worm castings, and I have the grow lights lowered to the appropriate height above the plants…And STILL the pak-choi is itty-bitty and bolting to flower. So Sad.

Any Advice?

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