Saturday 30 April 2011

Raising a roof

It's been a busy few days, lots happening but no time to blog. I was making use of a visitor to help me get the greenhouse erected. The actual kit of parts was dismantled from the garden in Newport Pagnell in January and brought over then for storage here until we had time to reassemble it.

Green house site

This is the site I picked out. It's sheltered on one side by the old cowshed, backed by the derelict haybarn behind and on a disused corner of land facing the main vegetable beds at the other end of the meadow we keep cut as 'lawn'. The sun (when it's out) shines on the area for most of the day but the plot can't be seen from the house and interrupts no charming views. So far, so good.

Men at work

However, when we came to prepare the area and dig out foundations for a proposed dwarf wall to lift the walls a little higher and provide some needed headroom, we hit a problem. Or several problems, in the shape of brick sized boulders of stone interspersed with golf ball sized rocks. It was impossible to get a fork in and even the mattock could do little to loosen the soil. In the end we decided to just level the site and use the fitted green house base straight onto the ground. It seems unnaturally stony here as if in times gone past hard core and rubble have been dumped here or even placed deliberately to create a hard standing. I chose the site so I'm grateful for the extreme efforts that made it possible to get the green house put up here. Nobody suggested we should move it elsewhere for a more convenient build.

Completed green house

And here it is. Three missing panes were already accounted for in damage before we took it to pieces in the UK, the actual transportation and construction was pretty much without incident. We'll get some replacement glass in the fullness of time but for now it's going to make growing fancy tomatoes a much more practical proposition than trying to grow them outside. I'm looking forward to using it.

3 comments:

Robert Brenchley said...

There's the remains of a building behind the greenhouse, so maybe that was hard standing for vehicles?

Peter Mulryan said...

Looks good, do let us know how you get on.

Catofstripes said...

Robert, that was the hay barn. I didn't think there was a hard floor here, there are several other large areas of concrete and hardstanding around the place but it seems the place has seen a lot of alterations over time.

Thanks Peter, I certainly will!