Building a Greenhouse

The 'site' before we'd done much of anything at all.


My husband unpacking the box that the greenhouse kit shipped in...

Here the frame is assembled and we started putting in the polycarbonate panels.

I skipped taking any photos between unpacking and getting the frame to this point because that process took us a couple of months. A part got broken, we tried to glue it, then we had to get a new one sent, etc. It was a mess. We were begining to think that we'd never get this thing built!

Here you can see the building within a building (or a garage). It was helpful to have a solid flat surface on which to work.

The greenhouse was pretty much completed while still in the garage.

The base. We leveled a spot, laid down the weed cloth and then...

staked the base frame into the ground in the corners.

Then we got a truck load of river rock gravel to cover the weed cloth.

The base with the gravel - awaiting the greenhouse.

This is the frame we built from 2x4's so that we could carry the greenhouse out to the site without dropping it (or torquing it). We set the greenhouse on top of this frame and successfully carried it to the other side of our property.

After we fitted the greenhouse over the base, my H installed all the little locking screws that hold it in place.

The finished greenhouse!! There is a vented widow on the north side of the greenhouse and the door that you see is a split door so that the top can be left open for ventilation.

We bought this shelving for organizing the basement, but for now, it works as a plant shelf. The first seedlings are already happily enjoying the sunshine.

We also put our two dwarf citrus trees flanking the doorway. One is a meyer lemon, the other a navel orange.

The corners of the greenhouse all have little downspouts so that it's easy to set up a system to collect rain water. We are going to start with 5 gallon buckets, but depending on how much rain we get, we may have to install some real rain barrels.