It's a hoop house, actually. My genius husband built it for us from a kit. It's got an interior raised bed. We've been enjoying lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets all winter.
One of my requirements when we were deciding on the size was it had to be big enough for a table. We've hosted luncheons and dinners out there. Today, the table is holding my tea, cucumber seedlings and the season's final daffodils.
I've had cut organic blue seed potatoes drying out there for a few days. They're now ready to go into our garden bed.
We supplement our raised bed gardening with a lot of potted plants. Tomatoes, hot peppers and cucumbers mostly. For those of you who don't have the ground space to garden in, try some potted plants this summer. We load our back deck with them. I make my own potting mixture. It's mostly garden soil, the kind you can get in bags at the garden center. In a large container I add in some compost, a little peat moss, a few handfuls of vermiculite and about 1/4 cup of Soil Moist crystals to help the pots hold moisture.
Today, I potted up tomatoes. To cover those drainage holes in the bottom of the pot, I put in a layer of skirting. That's the scrap fleece leftover from shearing. It acts both as a barrier and helps with fertilization. You can also cover those drainage holes with a bit of broken flower pot, fabric, packing peanuts, any number of things.
On top of the skirting I put a trowel of my potting mixture. I tear the bottom of the peat pot that my tomatoes have been growing in and set it in the pot. It's important not to touch the stem of a tomato. Just touch the peat pot or the leaves if you have to.
When you pot up a tomato plant, it's important to plant it as deep as you can. Just leave the very top leaves showing. By doing this, the plant will develop more roots along the buried stem and will give you a more vigorous plant.
We use the greenhouse as a season extender. We'll keep our potted plants in there under protection until our last frost. Then we'll use it again at the end of the growing season for our plants when the first frost is predicted.
