Tomatoes and a Straw Bale Greenhouse

The days are getting longer and warmer and green garlic shoots are starting to poke up out of the soil.  Spring is here!  We're starting to get things organized for another growing season both inside and out.

Great work space for me

Better late than never - we now have a workspace down in the family room close to the light stand where the seedlings were started in February.

We put together a few sawhorses and placed an old door across them to make a work surface.  Placed by the light stand and just a few steps from the utility sink in the laundry area, this will simplify the process of making soil blocks, starting seedlings, etc. (note: we don't have a garage, greenhouse or other suitable space on the property so this activity all takes place either in the family room or upstairs in the dining room).

 

Running out of room to grow

We've had a number of seedlings under lights inside since the end of February and now, as usual, the tomatoes have reached the lights and they have no more room to grow.  In past years we would have simply carried them upstairs and placed them in the sun by the beautiful southern-exposed garden doors but since we've done some major upgrading (new oak hard wood floor and ceramic tile entry) and removed the old plant stand that used to sit there, we needed to come up with a different plan.  One of us (Bob - the guy who did the reno) also mentioned something about not "turning the living room into a barn" this year.

  

Straw bale greenhouse (asparagus bed in front).

The solution we settled on was setting out straw bales in a rectangle and placing some old double-pane windows across them.  This spot gets lots of southern exposure at this time of year and should make a nice 'transition' space for the plants that we move outside over the next month or so.  For a little more heat boost overnight (if required) we added an electric trouble light powered via extension cord from the walk-in cooler (in the rear of the picture).

 Straw bale greenhouse
with end open.
Note the compost bins
on the left.

As it was very warm today, I left the end bale open so the tomato plants wouldn't suffocate, but have since closed it. The temperature is dropping and is expected to go below 0 degrees celcius tonight.  The trouble light I placed inside with the plants  will be giving off a little heat, so I'm pretty sure they will be fine. I'll just have to see when I check on them tomorrow. I only put 5 or 6 tomatoes out - just the tallest ones that were touching the lights.

We have eggplant and pepper seedlings but they are taking their sweet time with germinating and growing.  With the straw bale system we should have plenty of room for all our seedlings as they grow.

On another note, we bought an electric leaf/twig  mulcher like this one a couple of years ago and while it works well on twigs and small branches it is horrible for mulching leaves.  Unfortunately, leaves are what we have in abundance.  Without a mower we haven't had a way to turn the leaves into a good addition to our compost or soil making piles.  Bob heard about a great leaf shredder and mulcher for about the same price as the one we have ($199) so we searched for it online and found it at Home Depot.  The only other machines I knew of were about $1000 and that's a bit out of our budget!  We ordered the Flowtron Electric Leaf Eater from Home Depot.   It hasn't arrived yet, but when it does we will be giving it a good workout and reporting back for others who are trying to make their own soil in the city.

That's all for now.  Happy urban farming everyone!