Topless Greenhouse Update #3

Things have been going pretty good in the greenhouse (mostly).  We are enjoying lots of tomatoes (BLT’s and tomato sandwiches) and a couple of cucumbers.  The chickens still don’t seem too interested in the sunflowers though.

June 14 – The green beans are growing up the roof beams and then back down the other side.  Every day or two I can pick a couple of green beans.  I am storing the harvested ones in the freezer until I get enough to cook for the 2 of us.  The cucumbers are growing up and out of their area and over to where the sunflowers are.  

The tomatoes are a tangled mess but have lots of tomatoes.

The corn is looking so good . . . but trouble is coming. 

June 16 - We had some severe storms, and they did some damage to the corn and sunflowers.  It beat the corn down to the ground and bent over the sunflowers.  I was able to pick a couple of ears (kind of deformed but the chickens liked them) and I was able to tie the sunflowers back up.  

The sunflowers keep on blooming – being bent over didn’t seem to hurt them.

 

And I picked a really big cucumber – 11 inches! 

 

June 17 - The new area got covered over with cardboard and then a lot of compost was spread on top.  The bad storms that we had also washed some of the compost off the cardboard.  

June 20 – To prevent future storms from washing away the compost, hubby created a gulley alongside the garden (the water seemed to flow that way).  In the photo above, it is in between the new area and the greenhouse wall.  Hopefully, it will direct the water past the garden into the back of our yard.  Hubby was outside moving more compost over to the garden and our neighbor spotted him and offered to help. He has a front-end loader – took 3 trips and it was done!  Hubby then started putting up the fence.

 

June 25 - As of today, we have harvested the following: 

Romaine – 4 cuttings

Red Leaf Lettuce - 7 cuttings

Bell Peppers - 1

Radishes - 1

Green beans - 26

Cucumbers - 3 (gave one to the chickens)

Tomatoes – 20 (plus several more that got thrown onto the compost pile – bugs)

Corn – 2 (gave to chickens)

 

Still no eggplants forming but there are lots of flowers.  The onions are hanging in there – probably too hot for them but you never know.  All in all my topless greenhouse experiment is doing good.  I am learning what to do and what not to do next time.

Here is a current photo of the front of the greenhouse.  Till the next update . . .