More fresh winter-time salad

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The greens in the greenhouse have been fairing well. They keep growing and are providing us with some wonderful and tasty salads. The wood stove inside the greenhouse has made it possible to keep from losing much of the tender greens to the cold. We’ve had several nights in the low teens or in the single digits. With the stove loaded with wood and the dampers closed down, I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to put more wood in. I’ll load it a little before 10:00 p.m. and then put more wood in around 6:30 in the morning. On the coldest mornings, the thermometer in the greenhouse registered a temperature of about 25 degrees. I think it was a little warmer at ground level near the plants. However, it’s been warm enough inside that we’ve not lost any of our greens due to freezing. I don’t keep a fire going if the overnight temperature is not going to be less than the middle or upper twenties. During the day when the sun is shining, it is usually 80 degrees even if it’s only 20 degrees outside.

So far, I rate the wood stove in the greenhouse a success, and I’m very pleased with how it’s worked out.

Heating the greenhouse

The weather forecast says we’ll be a might bit chilly for the next few days. We’ll be in the teens tonight and tomorrow night and down to somewhere around 7 degrees by Friday morning. When it gets cold like that for a few days, it’s hard for the tender greens in our unheated greenhouse to survive. A couple of winters ago, I lost some beautiful romaine when the cold settled in for a few days. I hope to avoid that this year.

I set up a small wood stove in the greenhouse this afternoon. I’ll keep a fire in it while it’s cold the next few days and nights. We bought this little box stove through Harbor Freight several years ago and installed it in our fireplace in our home in Illinois. That winter fuel prices went up drastically, and we cut back on heating expenditures by burning wood.

Some of the other uses this little stove has seen include providing some heat in the garage one winter and generating smoke for a homemade smoker last November. Other than that, it’s not been used for anything.

For the greenhouse installation, I used a ten foot length of “stovepipe” I created from a piece of aluminum siding. This creation was previously used with the smoker, providing an opportunity for it to cool before entering the smoke chamber (I was cold-smoking some cured venison roasts). To this makeshift piece, I attached a few odds and ends chimney pieces that I ran through a piece of roofing metal affixed over the window opening in one end of the greenhouse. In the photo, the thermometer hangs from the ceiling, and there is some smoke in the air, mainly from the paint burning off the two foot section of new chimney pipe I used.

Malchiah and I lit a fire in it this afternoon, and I’ve added wood a couple of times this evening. How well it does tonight will determine whether or not I’ll decide to cover the plants Thursday night. Earlier, it was keeping it 20 to 25 degrees above the outside temperature. That’s not too bad considering there’s only a thin layer of plastic between the inside and the outside. I also set up a box fan in the greenhouse to help circulate the air. 

If the addition of a little heat keeps the plants happy, I’ll be happy, too. It won’t cost me much of anything, and it was easy to install.

First green salad of the year

We’ve been blessed with some nice, warm weather recently. Today was in the low 60s, although we had a few thunderstorms rumble through or nearby. The plants in the green house have been growing nicely. Their growth this time of year seems somewhat slow, but I expect that’s a result of the temperatures dropping down to or below freezing at night. It heats up nicely inside during the day when the sun shines.

This morning I watered all of the plants. We collect rainwater off of the garage roof which we use for watering. The rain fills 55-gallon barrels that sit under the eaves on one side. I don’t have any gutters on the garage at this time.

This afternoon I began thinning some of the plantings. The lettuce and spinach came up a bit thick. So, in order to promote better growth and harvests later, it’s necessary to thin them out a bit. The nice thing is that this process provides some nice tender, young greens for eating. I also picked a few leaves from those greens which didn’t need thinned in order to compile a nice salad mixture.

 
The salad included three different kinds of lettuce, spinach, turnip greens, radish greens, chard, pak choi, mustard greens, holland tyfon greens, mustard spinach komatsuma, arugula, and some garlic leaves. There were also a few small radishes I pulled.


Fresh greens in the middle of winter are certainly appreciated. They taste so good. They don’t need any salad dressing; just eat them as they are.

It was an excellent salad!

Our simple greenhouse

The first summer after we moved here, a friend in Illinois gave us chickens. I built a couple movable chicken houses for them and moved them nearly every day across the yard. For the winter I decided to build a greenhouse for them to live in. I was influenced by some of Joel Salatin's writings and his description of the benefits of this sort of housing arrangement for wintering fowl.

Now, I suppose I could have gone out and bought a greenhouse or a kit for one, but that would've cost more money than I wanted to spend. I am often creatively finding ways to spend little or no money to accomplish the ends I desire (some people call me cheap, but what do they know?). So, I spent less than $100 to build a 20' x 12' greenhouse. I used cedar poles I cut to form a rectangle on the ground. I drilled holes along the two long sides into which I inserted 20 foot lengths of 3/4" electrical conduit pvc. Using recycled lumber, I framed the two ends. On one I installed an old storm door that had been left in the barn, and in the other I put a storm window (also left by the previous owner). I covered the structure with 6 mil clear plastic I bought at Lowes. This came in a 100' roll -- enough to cover the structure 4 times. I nailed the plastic secure at the bottom edges. In order to keep the chickens from tearing the plastic, I put 4' poultry netting around the inside. I then had an unheated greenhouse.

The chickens liked it alright -- at least they seemed to (none ever actually said so). They scratched and did chicken things inside, but the winter wasn't that cold. So, I let them roam around outside on nice days. Eventually, I built them their own permanent house in the spring.

I used the greenhouse to start plants for the garden in the spring. I learned fairly soon that I couldn't expect plastic that isn't UV-treated to last for more than a season. It's not a big deal to recover it, thankfully. Three summers ago I used the greenhouse as a solar kiln. I stickered lumber (stacked in layers with 1" x 1" sticks running crossways which allows ventilation between layers) from a local sawmill inside the greenhouse, set up a couple of fans, and was able to dry the green lumber to 12% moisture content in about a month.

That fall I wanted to try growing greens in the greenhouse for winter salads, but I hadn't moved the last batch of dried lumber out. So, I built another smaller and more temporary greenhouse with moldy hay bales, short lengths of pvc, and more plastic. I had to crawl inside this one as there wasn't room to stand up. However, it worked great for salads, and we enjoyed fresh greens almost all winter.

This year, I redid the original greenhouse. I drove pieces of 1/2" tubing into the ground over which I slipped the 3/4" pvc on 3 foot centers. This allowed the sides to be a little more vertical before they curve across the top. That makes the space more useable up to the edges. I incorporated quite a bit of nice compost, compliments of Josey the cow, into the soil. I was able to plant seeds for lettuce, spinach, chard, mustard, holland tyfon greens, arugula, mache, radishes, turnips, and carrots at the beginning of November. That was a little later than I intended, but I was able to get the ground soaked nicely with rain before covering the greenhouse by waiting. I also planted some garlic in it.

The plants are growing fairly well, especially considering the cold temperatures we've had so far this year. It's been in the 20s quite a few nights and even into the teens a few. Yesterday, I dug up some plants from the regular garden which I planted for a fall crop and transplanted them into the greenhouse. This includes some chard and pak choi. They should enjoy the warmer temperatures. It can be freezing outside, but if the sun is shining, it'll be near 90 degrees in the greenhouse.

I'm looking forward to our first salad this winter. There will be some young greens that will need to be thinned before long. That'll make a nice, tender salad to enjoy.