This week has been very exciting. My greenhouse install date was Wednesday and I was really looking forward to the new addition to my garden. Getting your hands on a greenhouse at the moment is not easy. Pretty much everywhere is either sold out completely or you can be waiting months to get one. I ordered mine towards the end of March, so my waiting time wasn’t too bad. In any case I needed to get some groundworks done before the greenhouse could be installed and I had no idea how long it would take to get that done.
In advance of the greenhouse being delivered and installed I’d got a concrete base for it poured, as well as paths through the garden.
While I’d originally planned to put the greenhouse on the side of the garden that got the most sun it was also the side closest to the road, which meant that it was also susceptible to being hit by stones off the road or from passersby. So instead the greenhouse was set to go in on the other side. It might not get as much sun, but the difference isn’t that big to really matter.
Around 9am on a rather miserable damp May morning this van turned up.
As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I chose to order from a local company that also happen to be the Irish agent for Vitavia greenhouses, so the branding on the side of the van is to be expected!
So the guy from the greenhouse company set to assembling it and erecting it. I watched him work on and off over the course of the day and it was fascinating to watch how it all came together. Also impressive that he did the entire job solo.
The fully assembled and erected greenhouse was ready by about 4pm, so it took about 7 hours for him to put it up.
So what next?
When I was choosing a greenhouse I had a choice between sizes and, as you can see, I went with the biggest that I could get. My thinking being that my garden is big enough and having extra space in a greenhouse makes more sense than ending up running out of space.
I quickly realised that the shelving that I’d got for the greenhouse wasn’t enough and that I’d need more. I’d no idea how big the fully assembled greenhouse was going to be.
But this is not a problem. It means I’ve got more space to grow things!
I also need to get a few accessories for it.
The first ones that went in were for some basic lighting which is solar powered. I’m not sure how well the lighting will work in winter as it relies on the charge during the day, but I’ll cross that bridge later. (As an aside, I also have a solar light in the shed which should definitely help)
I also need to hook up some kind of water collection system. It rains a lot here, so making use of the rain water for the plants makes sense. Having plants die due to lack of water in Ireland is just plain wrong!
So what will I be growing in it?
I’m not 100% sure but to start with it’ll be tomatoes, chillis and a few other bits and pieces.
The weather so far this year has been quite nasty, so I’m not sure if I’ll have much success with growing various vegetables in the outdoor planters that I have. So I might end up putting some of the plants that would normally be growing outside in the greenhouse.
In any case for now I need to see about getting more plants as well as repotting some of the plants I have already.
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