Plot 5

This week has been all about the greenhouse, even though it won’t be in use much this year it will give us some shelter and a chance to get some salad crops growing.

On Saturday morning we took a family visit to the allotment to start moving the green house onto our plot. The greenhouse is 6ftx6ft and was mounted on a wooden frame and spiked into a brick base. Initially I thought of keeping the wooden frame but it proved to difficult to remove from the brick base without breaking it. Getting the greenhouse off the wooden frame was also harder than I imagined, out of 11 screws holding it down only two could be undone with a screwdriver. 40 minutes with a junior hacksaw and the rest of the screws were beheaded – the greenhouse was now ready to move.

As we only need to go two plots up we lifted the greenhouse intact and staggered up the hill, it wasn’t heavy just a little awkward, two adults and 3 kids all going in different directions Placing the greenhouse on two scaffolding boards we were ready for the next stage of levelling an area of ground and making the greenhouse base.

Saturday afternoon was spent levelling the ground for the greenhouse. This was not a trivial task as our plot is incredibly uneven to say the least. The boys began watering the humps and bumps so we could get a spade into the hard ground, I think they ended up wetter than the ground. Using a chillington hoe to get the top cover of weeds off we then dug out the area and dragged soil from the top end to the bottom. Two hours later we were as level as we were going to get and called it a day.

On Tuesday I knocked up a square frame, for the greenhouse to sit on, from some old 4×2 pressure treated timer we had lying around for ages. This was just 4 lengths held together at the ends with two long nails in each end. We placed the frame on the ground and ‘traced’ round it with the blade of the spade so we knew where to did the trench for levelling it, this trench was roughly dug to about 3 inches deep and then filled with 1 inch of sharp sand for the frame to sit on. A few wiggles and whacks with the club hammer and the frame was just about level so we backfilled the trench with some soil to firm it in place. Next we picked up the greenhouse and lowered it on top of the wooden frame – amazing the frame was about 1mm to long at one corner but with a little persuasion the greenhouse slipped snugly onto the frame – hooray!

Wednesday evening was back to allotment to screw the greenhouse down and start glazing it. The boys enjoyed ‘washing’ the glass with the hose turned on to the jet setting, under very strict supervision from me.

Here is the greenhouse just before we screwed it to the base and gave it a quick clean before glazing…

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