New greenhouse and garden

vickeym

The new green house is finished. This one is 10 x 20. Here are a few pictures of our pallet greenhouse. We filled it pretty quick. Ended up giving away about 25 tomato plants, and a dozen or so each broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage with a few others in smaller quantities that I just did not have time or room for. The raised bed is my herb garden. And we recycled old bathtubs for raised beds until we get our permanent beds put in. Then we may turn them into aquaponic components.

Lisa K

Very cool!

Torey

Awesome! Very ambitious!

vickeym

Had to take my vacation to get things transplanted into everything. Had tomatillos almost 4 foot tall in solo cups. LOL

EarlKelly

@vickeym love the resourceful reuse of things on hand. Fantastic job. You should be very proud of the job you did. Really enjoyed the pictures of everything. Loved the greenhouse you came up with. Thought I had seen it all for greenhouses. Loved what you came up with for yours. Hope you have a bumper crop from it. Looking forward to more pictures. Thanks

RustBeltCowgirl

Wow! Absolutely awesome.

vickeym

Garden is progressing well. I think I might have gotten to many in the greenhouse though. LOL

JodieDownUnder

@vickeym go you good thing! You should be very pleased with yourself, I'm pleased for you.

Torey

@vickeym

WOW! So glad you are continuing to post what is happening in your greenhouse. Very impressive that you were able to get the greenhouse up and have so much growing in it, in such a short time.

Love your use of snow fencing! What a great idea!

COWLOVINGIRL

Beautiful!

EarlKelly

@vickeym looks fantastic, you should be very proud. Thanks for the update. Loved them,everything looks great.

Ferg

pretty wonderful!

i miss my hoop house. But because of the area I was in, growing in the summer was a bad idea. The powdery mildew congretated in there. HOWEVER, if I were flush, I'd have installed some lights. Great research on certain spectrum getting rid of the mildew types and chromista for the parts of the country where the humidity really causes those fungi and fungi-types to grow well and abundantly.

lmrebert

@vickeym Love it!!! I pray one day I can have a beautiful greenhouse like this!!

vickeym

Thank you all. I have been so excited by how well everything is doing I can't help but share it. my pickling cucumbers are going crazy. Hoping within a year or two we will be farming full time and I won't have to be on my feet on concrete all day anymore. Or deal with coworkers who don't work but no one does anything about it. LOL

EarlKelly

Looks fantastic. Should be very proud. Hope everything comes together so you can farm full time and get out of the rat race. Stay safe.

vickeym

EarlKelly Thank you.

maimover

@vickeym that is awesome! I love using spent things for new projects. Great job! Also love following everyone’s successes and learning experiences. One can get all sorts of ideas from others. I have a big roll of that orange net “stuff” and have plants that need to be trellised; didn’t even think about using that. Thanks for the inspiration 😊

MissPatricia

I am so inspired by your post, vickeym. Makes me want to put in a greenhouse so I can do more.

LaurieLovesLearning

I don't know how I missed this.

We have been able to get a number of shelters like this fairly cheap/free and have some pallets around, which look like they might add to stability(?)...or could get more if they are not in good enough shape. I also admire the snow fence idea.

Very inspiring to say the least! I will be showing what you've done with my husband.

Tell your man he did well and he has a lot of fans here. 😄

vickeym

MissPatricia Thank you. I never realized how much of a difference it would make. We are hoping to build another one this year and maybe more. We are going to try and do at least one a year until we get enough. We want produce not only for ourselves and a few friends but also to be able to sell. Our local grocery has already stated they would buy if I get it growing and we have a good group of egg customers waiting for us to get growing well enough for them to buy also.

Just have to get my garden beds built in a more permanent area. So far have had to move most of it every year except the greenhouse.

LaurieLovesLearning It worked out wonderfully, although we will replace the snow fence with something that has either much smaller or much larger holes. The cucumbers grew through the holes then outgrew the holes which had to be cut through to keep them from growing into the cucumber.

I got very lucky when I found my husband. He has managed to end up with fans on pages he has never been on. 😍 On the vanilla co-op page I belong to he has hundreds of fans who tell me he is a keeper. When I thought about buying more vanilla beans (to make more homemade vanilla, vanilla paste and vanilla sugar) in a variety I did not have, but kinda wanted to try. He not only encouraged me to get some but had me get more than I originally planned to. Many of the members are regularly told they have enough or asked why they need more with all they have.

LaurieLovesLearning

@vickeym You will have to get extra creative & offer omlette kits (eggs with additional omlette ingredients...and make it interesting with varied & "new" flavors) and similar. It is funny, but people love things like that that make things easy and will pay more for it.

Then there's those practical ones like me...haha! I will buy in a practical way and do my own thing. Kits are not for me!

Ruth Ann Reyes

WOW! I'm so impressed!

vickeym

LaurieLovesLearning We are not usually much for kits either. We tend to look at those over prices things and say... "that looks good, but I can do it myself for half or less the price."

I have created my own versions of some sauces we tried and liked but were too expensive for what you get. Right now I am brewing my own "Pure" vanilla. Buying it locally is super expensive and you never know what they put in or how it gets handled. Found a good group with reasonable prices on fresh vanilla beans and Costco has good prices on vodka. I have to wait a year to use it. But pure vanilla extract is nothing like the normal store bought version, plus the same beans can be used to make vanilla paste, vanilla sugar, vanilla salt or vanilla powder. So you can get as many as three or four products from the same set of beans.

That said, you are right some folks do like the ease of kits. Have thought when we do get enough to sell to local grocery we might make up kits with ingredients for soups or stews, salsa and so on. A raw salsa kit with fresh tomatoes, hot peppers, onions, bell peppers etc. An herbal seasoning kit for soups, stews, etc. Maybe if I get my horseradish growing without something stealing the roots before they start growing I could try a fire cider kit too.

vickeym

Ruth Ann Reyes Thank you. My husband seems to do very well at most everything he decided to do.

LaurieLovesLearning

@vickeym What do you use to make vanilla powder? Whatever I have used hasn't given me anything satisfactory.

vickeym

After the extract is made and if using the caviar separately, it has been removed. Then dry the beans either in a dehydrator or the oven either with just the pilot lite or light for a few days, or oven at around 150 degrees for a few hours till the beans snap easily when bent. Then I blend them in the dry container of my Vitamix. My small food processor left them too chunky for me. If you have a coffee grinder that can grind very fine that would work as well.

If using in vanilla sugar you can add some sugar to help when grinding. Will help grind it finer. Or if you have a grain mill that can do very fine grinds.

It will not grind to something that dissolves in liquids but will be finer and not as intrusive in the products you add it to.

LaurieLovesLearning

@vickeym Thanks. My little processor, coffee grinder & manual coffee grinder all didn't work. Nothing was fine enough and chunks varied in size. I wouldn't want to put those into our WonderMill. I don't have a Vitamix, but I keep hearing about them. I really have minimal space, but it might be something I will have to look into unless something else pops up. I got convinced that you must have to have a special commercial grinder to get good vanilla powder.

I had previously ordered pure ground vanilla beans from thevanillafoodcompany, but it's all so expensive now & I wanted to use the beans up even after making vanilla sugar. I will need to investigate further, I guess.

I really like the baking stability of the powder & like putting the powder into fruit salad with yogurt & poppy seeds. I now skip the honey because it gets way too sweet.

By the way, the beans & caviar look showy in honey, and it kind of tastes like ice cream. 😋

vickeym

@LaurieLovesLearning Thinking a Ninja blender or a larger processor should work. But have not tested the theory. I have the manual Wondermill. I have faith with the stone burrs it would grind the vanilla very fine. Though I have not had enough to use at one time yet to try it. I just started making vanilla in July so don't have many used beans ready to try making powder with.

LaurieLovesLearning

@vickeym The manual wondermill is not available in Canada. I have the electric version.

SuperC

@vickeym Oh, I can feel the warmth and I like the idea using that orange fencing as trellising for the cucumbers as they are climbers :)

Congrats on the completion of your pallet greenhouse! What is its inside temperature?

vickeym

SuperC There were times over the summer it could reach 100 degrees in there. Had to leave vent window and door open or things got too hot. Wish it got anywhere near that now. We have had a long cold spell with our highs barely above 0 if they even made it above 0. Many mornings lately have been -20 or close to that. Hardly any snow yet.