Growing food in a greenhouse

It was already the 20. of Mai when I started to prepare the greenhouse for the new growing season. I gave all of the planters a nice thick layer of compost and started sowing.

I sowed almost everything that should stay in the greenhouse direct into the greenhouse planters. I sowed cucumbers, for fresh eating and pickling, watermelon, some tomatoes, basil, dill, one courgette and flowers. Only the celery, chilli and lettuce I pre-cultivated in trays. I have been watering the greenhouse every day and all sprouted well. Up until now there has been no real problem with pests yet, but I do keep a close eye on everything.

For the first time in years the watermelons are taking off really good and are even forming fruit already, as you can see on the picture above.

With the cucumbers I keep on top with cutting of any side shoots and if I see any leaves with a discolouring or any damage I remove it. This way I hope to keep the plants healthy as long as possible. The first pickling cucumbers are already forming.

Cucumber vine with 2 pickling cucumbers forming with the flowers still attached

In the middle June I planted some lettuce in the greenhouse planters and we have been eating from it already, as to the lettuce I planted outside at the same time, which is still too small to harvest from.

2 wooden planters in a greenhouse with lettuce

A volunteer Asia-Salat Red Giant appeared between some dill and went into flower already. I will let it go to seed and self-sow.

Asia-Salat Red Giant blooming in a greenhouse

The Asia-Salat I have in the greenhouse still looks good, but all of the Asia-Salat and radishes I planted/ sowed outside are perforated and dying. We have a big problem with cabbage flea beetles (phyllotreta). About middle of June, when the wetter has been a bit dryer, everything outside started to have little holes in the leaves.

I have sowed borage and marigolds for the insects in the greenhouse and the borage has started flowering already.

Blue borage flowering inside a greenhouse

The basil is ready for harvesting and will be turned into a delicious pesto soon. I have large-leaved basil, like I always have, red basil and Thai basil. The last 2 are new for us and we will try out how they taste. If we like them we will grow them more often.

A row of lush large-leaved basil in a wooden planter in a greenhouse

I am very happy I gave the space and sowed one seed of courgette in a planter in the greenhouse. It sprouted wonderfully and thrives very well. We will be able to harvest the first courgettes in the coming days.

2 courgette with the flower still attached on the courgette plant

Strangely enough with the courgette I sowed in little planters to plant outside later, only one seed sprouted. A few weeks later I sowed again, but double this time. Now many more sprouted, so it is looking good on having lots off courgettes this year.

11 small square planters with courgette seedlings

I am only wondering why the first batch did not want to sprout. Maybe it was to cold standing on the ground. I should provide for some shelving before next spring. This would give me some more space to pre-cultivate seedlings as well.

At the moment everything stands on the ground and the seedlings in the trays also put there roots into the soil below, which is not very helpful. Also I thing I have been using the wrong soil for pre-cultivating. The seedlings in the trays came up nicely, but after some time some of the seedlings did not look so good anymore, the tomato seedlings did not really grow and some seedlings simply died. We also had a few slugs that caused some damage among the seedlings. Another possibility is that the seedlings just where to long in the trays, but I found the seedlings to small to plant, only they just did not want to grow a little more.

A few trays with small seedlings and some little square planters with bigger seedlings on the ground in a greenhouse

I was thinking that the soil I used was maybe not ideal, so looked for something better. I did not find soil to pre-cultivate locally, so I bought a good potting soil and sifted out the larger pieces. I am trying this out with lettuce and with another batch of celery. Time will tell if this is better.

To finish this post an overview picture of the greenhouse at the moment. The courgette is right around the corner, so that is not visible.

A greenhouse with thriving plants in the wooden planters and seedlings in trays and small planters on the ground

We build this greenhouse in the spring on the base of the broken play tent of our children. If you are interested here is the link to that.

We first put up some make shift tables in the greenhouse and used the greenhouse as a nursery. I unfortunately do not have usable compost for starting seed, so I had the children sift out the bigger parts of potting soil I had purchased. My husband had made each of them there own sieves and they had a lot of fun. With the sifted soil we made soil blocks to sow in. We already had some crates, but my husband also made us a bunch of wooden trays exactly fitted for the soil blocks.

A nursery in a greenhouse filled with seedlings and a pregnant woman watering the seedlings

I had seen this in a video where one side of the tray is open. The idea is to put the soil blocks on a piece of cloth which hangs out of the open side. The over hanging cloth then needs to hang in a water reservoir of some sort. This way the cloth transports the water to the soil blocks and keeps them moist. Since I was not prepared with cloth and reservoirs, I will have to try this coming growing season. (A little reminder to myself to prepare!) This year I just used some water sprayers and a big tub we already had. The trays took turns soaking in the tub and in between soakings we would spray water over the soil blocks. Obviously this also functioned fine. It is just a little more labor intense.

Red beet seedlings in soil blocks in a plastic tray

We sowed a lot of different things like red beets, peas, cabbages, leeks, celeriac, different types of corn, lettuce, basil, amaranth, quinoa, sunflowers and different other types of flowers and everything else I am forgetting. This was a great joy. Everything sprouted quickly and the little seedlings did very well in the protection of the greenhouse.

Also the peppers and tomato plants, I had sown indoors, transferred to the greenhouse as soon as the temperature did not drop too much anymore at night. The little seedlings where already getting to big for the sowing tray and we potted them op each in there own little pot. Since the kid’s filled the pots for me, this went very quickly. I went a little over board while sowing the tomatoes and peppers. I had way too many plants and did not know where to plant all of these, but as you could have read in a previous post we found places for them other than the greenhouse.

Tomato and pepper seedlings in there seed tray

Well, after spring finally arrived (it stayed cold for very long this season) and we where able to plant a lot of the seedlings, one side of the greenhouse became empty and we started preparing for planting. We rowed up some mortar buckets and started filling them.

Mortar buckets rowed up in a greenhouse ready for planting

We started with a big layer of old straw and hay, then a layer of sawdust from our sawmill, then a layer of horse manure finishing with a good layer of potting soil to plant the seedlings in.

**Mortar bucket filled half way with old straw and hay**

**Mortar bucket with a thin top layer of sawdust**

**Mortar bucket with a thin top layer of horse manure**

**Mortar bucket with a top layer of potting soil**

We planted these mortar buckets with tomato plants, cucumber plants, some water melon and celery.

Planted mortar buckets with tomato plants, cucumber plants, water melon and celery rowed up in a greenhouse

Beside the water melon, these plants where thriving and the soil kept its moisture even during the heat of summer. Obviously I would water almost every day. Only the cucumbers, I had planted 2 in one bucket, would suffer when I would skip a day of watering. I should have planted only 1 in a bucket.

It took us until middle of July to get to plant the rest of the plants in the greenhouse. For that my husband builds me these planters out of wood (about 20 x 20 cm, 2 meters long). I decided to work with planters, because there is only compacted sand, tree roots and couch grass in the ground.

Greenhouse filled with empty wooden planters and mortar buckets filled with plants

Since the planters aren’t very big, I started filling the planters with a nice layer of sheep wool to store moisture in the planters.

Wooden planters with a good layer of sheep wool on the bottom

On top came a layer of horse manure for some extra nutrients, topping of with potting soil to plant in.

Wooden planters with a layer of horse manure on a good layer of sheep wool

I planted 5 tomato plants in one planter. I always under estimate how big plants get and looking back, I would say 4 tomato plants in one planter are more then enough.

The peppers I planted 7 in one planter, but I think 5 would have been better. I have to trellis the peppers next year since there is too little soil for them to get hold in and the bigger plants fell over.

All in all we had a nice harvest from the greenhouse. We where able to snack on a lot of small delicious tomatoes right in the greenhouse. The kids loved that.

Large tomato bunch from snack tomatoes with tomatoes in different stages of ripeness

Once it became warm enough the cucumbers developed and we could eat cucumbers on a regular basis.

Cucumber plants in a greenhouse with 3 large cucumbers

We had a good harvest of cayenne peppers for hot sauce which my husband loves.

Cayenne peppers in wooden planters in a greenhouse with green and red peppers

I had also sown some basil, potted them up in some small planters, but never came to planting them. Luckily they did very well in the small planters and I made some pesto with them. I definitely should grow a lot more basil next year, but it needs to grow in the greenhouse. I don’t know why, but the basil grown outside does not taste good. Maybe it is to cold here to grow good basil outside, I do not know.

Good looking basil in small pots in a greenhouse

I was a little late with planting peppers, so we where lucky to be able to harvest some peppers at all. I tried to let some peppers ripen indoors, but they did not taste so good. I think we are to far north to grow peppers in a cold greenhouse and we will only grow a few pepper plants next season to see if they turn out better if planted earlier. Furthermore we had some bug problems. They eat the peppers we would have been able to harvest first.

We actually where able to harvest a very small watermelon we let ripen some more indoors (frost was coming). It was small, but tasted very well. We where well into the season before a watermelon started to form. A lot of flowers started small watermelons, but they turned brown quickly. It would be nice to know why.

Small watermelon still attached to the plant in a hand in a greenhouse

The celery I planted was a variety for the stalks. I planted this type of celery for the first time, because I have little luck with growing celeriac. The celery thrived and we love the stalks in our soups, so it is a good substitute for the celeriac. I will have to grow a lot more of the celery next season and I will try to grow it outside as well. The celery is in the picture with the basil just peeking up from behind the basil.

Beginning of October the blight also struck inside the greenhouse. Most of the snack tomatoes where done and eaten, but the bigger tomatoes still had a lot of nice green tomatoes hanging on the plants. We harvested the good green tomatoes and the last cayenne peppers and I made them to hot sauce, so they would not go to waste.

After that we cleared the greenhouse. I wanted to try to use the greenhouse over winter for some lettuce, welsh onions and some dill. Then, one night, our runner ducks where taken by a wild animal and we started locking our geese in the greenhouse at night for protection. So that experiment is done with. A priority now is to build a decent coup with a door for the geese, before I need the greenhouse for starting seedlings in the spring.

Some Notes for the next growing season

In August the greenhouse was like a little jungle and I do not really like diving underneath the plants to look for eatables. Furthermore the wooden planters where to close to each other and I was damaging plants trying to get through for watering, so I am going to make some changes in the greenhouse.

I am taking out 2 wooden planters and space out the other 8 planters, so I will have more space for the 4 walkways in between them, starting with one planter at the wall and putting 2 planters together between walkways. Furthermore the height of the planters will be increased to give the plants more soil to root in and have more material (soil) to store moisture.

The 2 extra wooden planters will find there place next to each other at the wall where the mortar buckets are now. These will be for the cucumbers, so I can trellis them parallel to the wall, instead of having to trellis them to the middle of the greenhouse. This way I can reach the plants better. To utilise as much space as possible I will keep some mortar buckets in front of these wooden planters with enough space in between so I can reach the plants in the wooden planters behind them comfortably.

This way there will be space for 4 cucumber plants, 5 pepper plants, 10 cayenne pepper plants and 20 tomato plants. Basil and celery will be interplant in between those plants and the mortar buckets will be for the kid’s to use. They love to help with growing food and had been cramping every space in the greenhouse I had allowed them last growing season.

Visitors in the greenhouse

Tomato Marmorossa

We grew this tomato variety for the first time last season and loved it. It looks beautiful and tasted amazing. We saved seed from this variety for next season.