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鑿。

Growing my own avocado tree. Only makes sense when you eat as many avos as I do 😊. It’s soooo easy. There’s a chance it won’t be the most fruitful tree, but it’s worth the minimal effort it takes to grow one.

The table:

Well, the weather was kind to us and we made good progress on the greenhouse today. It feels like it’s really taking shape now ... 🙏

Overview and Design

This is the plan for a greenhouse i built this spring and wanted to share with anyone who wants to have a greenhouse that is cheap, durable, easy to build and easy to cover. The final dimensions are 12′ X 16′ and ~6.5′ tall in the middle. It has 192 sq feet of walkway/growing space and could be made much larger with little additional effort.

When I started designing this structure, I wanted something that could be built easily by one person without any curves, which can be tedious to work with. I initially settled on a basic “A” frame design which provides strength and simplicity. Unfortunately that would have given me either a very tall midpoint or a smaller base, and therefore less surface area for plants. I also wanted a design that could make use of standard 8 foot 2x4′s. (I ended up using 2x3′s because they were cheaper but I think any dimensional lumber would work.) I ended up with a design that essentially cuts the top off of the traditional “A” frame which would mean I would need more braces to support the flat roof as well as a wire mesh or cattle panel stretched and secured across the flat roof area to support the plastic during rain and snow. The cattle panel or mesh are very important; you do not want several gallons of water to pool on top and split your plastic.

Construction

After designing I was able to build the frame in one afternoon. First you will need to build 4 sections as shown in the last sketch. Once they are built and placed roughly where the structure will be, you can begin to lean them towards one another and attach them with the 4′ roof boards. The structure will be very prone to racking (deforming or falling down) until you add the 4′ diagonal braces. The 4′ roof boards attach to the 6″ of board that stick out at the top of each section. The diagonal braces incorporate triangles into the structure and make it very rigid.

Conclusion

Why i like this design so much is because it is really cost effective and can be customized a lot. You could use 10′ or 12′ upright boards instead of 8′ if you want to grow really tall tomatoes or trellis extensively. You could also build more sections and increase the length substantially. 

Roof cladding update: a work in progress.

Our roof is now almost totally cladded, with just a few finishing pieces needed around the edges. Our low-energy LED lights are lighting up our home and the pine coloured wood makes everything feel warm and cosy inside. We also can’t stop admiring our shiny new porthole and the shiny new piece of glass where our broken window used to be.

If only the van was back on the road again, we’d be spending nights by the fire under the stars on the wild coast of Cornwall. Instead the van is sitting in her naughty corner in the driveway awaiting further MOT repairs. She’s been off the road for nearly a month now because the computer at the garage considers our brakes “underpowered”, never mind the fact we’ve been up and down mountain roads for the last 7 months. All the parts have been replaced, we’re just awaiting our new secondhand master cylinder and fingers crossed that’ll be the end to our problems.