Greenhouse is a Go!

I'm getting antsy to start planting! If the difficulty I had ordering from Johnnyseeds.com was any indication so are a lot of other folks.

I've made a deal to sell starts at the local feed store this year. We decided to compete with our little greenhouse in town and the big stores 20 miles away by only selling "heirloom" plants mostly. Along with that we are expanding our garden out to market size - maybe an acre this year. Plus putting in some brambles...

Anyway, the GH project is to a place we can at least get started. Here is the south side with the recycled storm windows finally installed:

I only have one layer of good 6mil UV resistant poly on so far (the only thing here store bought) but will get on another layer on before the seedlings come out of the cabinet.

Speaking of the seed cabinet, here it is with the front and top hinged up. You can see the vinyl sheet on the bottom under which is the heat mat with the thermostat on the cabinet and the thermocouple ready to stick in a bread pan of soil to control the temp.

I'm going to build a shelf and hang a grow light inside for plants to get a little bigger before they re potted out. BTW the cabinet is 5' wide, 2' deep and 2' tall and if I were to fill it up with 3/4" soil blocks it would sprout 1,800 seeds at once!

Finally, here are some of the benches, 2'x8' (2 are pushed together in the foreground). I'm set up for standard 1020 trays, you can see 72 cell plug flats closer and six-packs beyond. 

Theoretically we can get 3,400 plug cells or about 300 6-packs on the benches without getting too cramped so we'll start everything in plug trays they move them on to 6-packs as it gets closer to march(?) and stick them outside under some heavy row covers.

That's the plan anyway. This year is going to be all about balancing what hope to sell as starts and what we'll plant ourselves.

I always knew I'd be doing this eventually, I just wish I'd gotten around to it sooner!

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