ColorBlends (one of my two favorite places to buy bulbs) was having a pre-season sale … and here are the bulbs I’m ordering for Autumn planting. When Old House Gardens has a sale, I’ll add some more heirloom bulbs too … but all of these should naturalize.
| Daffodil 1000 |  |
White Hot |  |
| Praestans Shogun |  |
Batalinii Bright Gem |  |
| Bakeri Lilac Wonder |  |
Humilis Violacea |  |
| Vernal Jewels |  |
We have some tulips blooming!
There have been wild temperature fluctuation, so we haven’t actually gotten plants into our greenhouse yet! But there have also been some MAJOR wind storms – 50+mph – and I can say the structure is holding up well. I had to add some binder clips to each support – four wasn’t enough and they’d pop off as the plastic would get blown around. Which meant we had several binder clip scavenger hunts – but adding a few extra clips seems to have alleviated this issue.
The other problem I’ve experienced is that one side would get pulled out from the mulch & bricks that were holding it down. Temporarily solved this by using soil instead of mulch on that side to hold it all down, but I am certainly going to buy a greenhouse plastic that is two feet wider. It would be easier to mount the material along the side if there was more overhang.
Using a combination of techniques I’ve found on the Internet, Anya and I built a low tunnel greenhouse yesterday. The whole process took about ninety minutes, but we aren’t quite done (the plastic needs to be snugged up, and I want to bury the plastic along the ground).
Last year, Scott built two raised bed garden areas – one is being used for composting until it gets full enough to be a garden. This is the second one – the veggie growing area.
We wanted to extend our growing season – and have a convenient place to start a *lot* of plants, so I researched easy to build greenhouses. I found two types I like – the low tunnel and the hoop house. A low tunnel is basically PVC pipe bent over your ground with plastic run along it. How “low” is the low hoop? Well, that depends on the length of PVC and the width of the tunnel. The HandyMath.com complete circular arc calculator will take these valeus, then the “height of arc” is the height at the highest point of the tunnel. The lowest point is 0″ (it hits the ground).
A hoop house seems to be a low tunnel on “stilts”, so I decided to make a low tunnel this year … see how it works out for us. If we want it taller, we’ll add the “stilts” next year and have a hoop house.
The materials we used – sourced from the local Home Depot and Staples – are 2′ lengths of 1/2″ rebar, 10′ lengths of 1/2 PVC pipe (used for drinking water – so in theory it shouldn’t leach not-food-safe chemicals), plastic painting dropcloth, and large binder clips. Total cost was just under 55$ for a 25′ run.
After placing the PVC and rebar along the garden bed to make sure everything was spaced as desired, we used hammers to drive the rebar into the ground. Anya started the rebar, and I finished driving it in with an ~8 lb sledge.
After the rebar was firmly in the ground, we slipped one end of the PVC pipes over the rebar.
Anya grabbed the pipes and pulled them over to me, and I slipped the other end of the pipe over the rebar. At this point, it kind of looks like I’m building a Conestoga wagon on my garden. I tied a rope along the top of the arches to make a ridgeline, but I don’t know that this is actually doing anything structural.
We then spread the plastic drop-cloth over the arches – it isn’t as clear as “clear plastic” sounded to me 🙂 But after visiting two local Home Depots, neither of which had “greenhouse plastic” … it’ll do. I used the binder clips to hold the plastic onto the PVC pipes. Right now, there are four clips on each arch, and eight clips on the arch where two pieces of plastic are joined.
Unfortunately, a thunderstorm came up pretty quickly … so instead of tightening the plastic, I laid bricks to hold the plastic down along the ground. Once the plastic is snugged up, I will put the bricks back and completely bury the edges in dirt or mulch to avoid wind getting under it. I still need to make a door for an entrance too – right now, you have to unearth and unfurl quite a bit of plastic material to get into the tunnel.
Possible upgrades for the future:
We’ll either replace the plastic sheets with a bug netting later in the Spring or just take the whole thing down & put it back up in Autumn to (hopefully) extend the growing season even more. If we are really lucky, we will be able to grow some greens throughout the winter.
I think I’m going to place the little seed-starting pots into the greenhouse, then transplant them into the ground as they get a little bit bigger.
We’ve got some crocuses popping up! I’m starting to see some of the tulip leaves too – hopefully rogue frosts and snow storms don’t hurt them.
I’ve been making my own soap for about three years now. I’ve used several different recipes, but my default is a 100% coconut oil soap recipe. I double the recipe to make a six pound batch of soap (66 oz coconut oil, 9.6 oz lye, 19.2 oz water, and 3-6 oz of essential oil if I add any).
The process is quite easy — put the oils (or oil, in this case) in a pot and heat until melted.
In a safe container (heat resistant plastic like polypropylene 5), combine the water and lye slowly — it gets HOT. I use a graduated pitcher from a science supply center. Soap recipes have a weight of water and not volume, so the markings aren’t useful for this particular application.
I turn the oven light on – it’s an incandescent bulb and heat the oven to about 110 degrees F. I then put the lye container and warm oil in the oven and let them set for an hour or so to reach thermodynamic equilibrium.
When the hour is about up, get everything ready. Always a stick blender. If essential oil, colorant, herbs, or abrasives are going to be added, I weigh them out and have them waiting. Remove the pot of oil and set it somewhere (Not a hot burner! This was the one thing that absolutely stumped me on my first batch — the instructions say to heat the oil, but it never says to remove the pot from heat!). Set the stick blender in the pot. Get the container of lye water. Turn on the stick blender and get the oil moving. Slowly add the lye mixture.
Keep the stick blender going until you reach ‘trace’ — kind of like making whipped cream or egg whites where there’s a soft peak and a firm peak state. You’re looking for it to thicken up enough that lines will form or a little bit dropped back into the pot stay in a little mound. You are NOT looking for something that holds peaks (it would be difficult to get into molds at that point).
If you are adding ‘stuff’ you want to do that at the first sign of trace. Some add-ins will accelerate trace (basically harden your soap quicker), and adding them into a medium trace can get you a big block of solid soap pretty quickly.
Once the soap mixture reaches trace, put into the soap molds. Tap the molds on a solid surface a few times to remove air bubbles. I place these molds on a cutting board (hard surface) and then place them back into the warm oven. Proper instructions tell you to wrap it up in towels to retain the heat. After about 12 hours in the warm oven, I turn off the oven light. Let it sit a few more hours to cool, then set on the counter overnight. If the soap is hard to get out a mold, pop the whole thing in the freezer – frozen soap pops right out.
Voila, you’ve got soap. Let it sit for a few weeks to cure (dry out).