This is the day, it must be the day, the day when we can truly hope that spring is here to stay. We can look forward to nice weather from now until next November. Last night I had a heater running in my greenhouse, I unplugged it this morning and don’t plan to plug it back in this season.
I had the greenhouse all buttoned up tight to try to keep the cold at bay for the last week. Today the sun came out in earnest and really started heating it up inside. Think about a car with the windows rolled all the way up. It heats up pretty nicely. On a cold day it is nice to sit inside on a cold sunny day, but on a warm sunny day it gets too hot too fast. That is kind of what my greenhouse is like when it is all buttoned up.
The today swung from 34 to 101 before I opened up the vents. Now it is hanging at 88, a nice green house temperature.
One of the things that you need to think about when you are designing a greenhouse is air circulation. In a low tech greenhouse like mine, that can be a challenge.
Strategically placed folds in plastic allow for strategic ventilation
I use strategically placed folds in the plastic that can either be propped open like in the image above, or held closed with wires and ties that are also seen in the image. There are vents placed to catch breezes from the north, south and west. We seldom get wind from the east on a warm sunny day, so it isn’t necessary to have vents on that side.
This view shows a closer view of the same vent.
In addition to venting out excess heat, this also allows for the introduction of breezes that will prepare the plants for the winds they will face when they are moved out into the garden.
This is the view I can only get from a camera. Looking toward the door from the back vent..
But until that day, they will have to be satisfied with sitting in a warm, sometimes hot, moist greenhouse. They like it like that.
If you look around my garden, you are going to see re-purposed materials. Pallets and windows, old deck boards and paving stones, it is all likely to have a home in my garden eventually.
Yesterday I showed you my new cold frame made from old house windows and reused deck joists. Today I want to give you a glimpse at some of the things in my garden that are made of recycled materials.
Solar dehydrator built from salvaged shower doors, salvaged windows and pallets.
This solar dehydrator is the most sophisticated of the stuff I have built for my garden. The walls are made out of old shower doors that came out of our house. The frames on the walls are made from pallet wood as is the frame of the solar collector (the part that juts out in the front). The glass on the solar collector is from old windows, but I can’t remember where they came from. The 4x4s that hold it up were gathered from the free wood bin at the outlet store for a local hardware store. In this case I did actually buy some materials but normally I don’t. I bought the plywood and the sheet metal that is used to gather the heat in the collector. I also bought screen material to cover the racks on the inside, but the racks themselves are made out of old pallet wood.
This view shows the solar dehydrator at work
I took it even a step further, and after a couple of years of using it only as a solar dehydrator I decided I could take off the solar collector in the spring and use it as a greenhouse. I think I used it as a greenhouse for two seasons. I painted some large stones black and put them down in the bottom so they could gather heat from the sun during the day and slowly release it at night to keep it warm. It worked great.
The same structures that allow for dehydrating vegetables can be adapted to hold trays of seedlings.
On really cold nights, I had a small heater fan on a thermostat that I kept down at the bottom with the large rocks, and it would only come on when it was really starting to get chilly. It works great as both a solar dehydrator and as a greenhouse.
But I found that I needed more space in my greenhouse, so I built a greenhouse out of pallets. The greenhouse actually started out to be an ice shack, but it never made it there. I had found a very large heavy duty pallet and salvaged it with the idea of using it as the base of the ice shack. I had used re-purposed 4x4s and attached them as skids or skis to the base of the pallet. I figured this would allow me to move it around better on the ice and would give it enough substance to drag around without fear of tearing up the pallet when dragging it behind the truck. But I never got the sides on it before my back went out on Christmas Day 2013 and stopped those plans.
Before adding the plastic sheeting, you can see the simple structure made from pallet wood. the floor is also a large pallet.
It sat in my shed until that spring when I decided I needed a greenhouse more than I needed an ice shack. So I figured out how to put up walls made out of pallets, and then tried to figure out how to add a roof without making it too heavy. To that end, I found some old PVC pipes that had been part of the set of “The Jungle Book” put on by Red Cedar Youth Stage (local children’s youth theater). It seemed like a shame to see them thrown away when there was bound to be a need for them someday.
Here you can see how the pallets were used for the sides and internal shelving. The only structural elements not made of pallets are the ceiling joists which are made from re-purposed PVC pipe.
Add some shelving made out of pallets and some purchased sheet plastic and you have a greenhouse for not much more than the cost of the screws and plastic sheeting. The heat collecting mechanism in here is a combination of those black rocks from the other greenhouse, and, you guessed it, a re-purposed basketball hoop base. The base is black, and it holds about 40 gallons of water. It gathers that heat in the day and lets it out all night.
The pallets were used to create a three bin compost pile.
One of these days, I will do a story on composting. But for now I will just touch base with how you can use pallets to create a three bin compost system. In the picture below you can see how a handful of pallets can be used to manage your compost pile. The idea is that you fill up the first bin, then when it gets full, you move it into the next bin, and ultimately the last. This allows you to contain the compost, and each time you move it to the next bin you stir it up and your finished compost is in the last bin. Ultimately my compost pile way outgrew this system so it is no longer in use.
If you know me, you know that I am a form follows function kind of guy. I build something for the job it needs to do. But sometimes, the function is aesthetic. The picture below shows a trellis, no let’s call it a garden sculpture that I made out of pallets.
Behind the lattice work you can see the original pallet that serves as the frame.
In this case, I needed a structure to support the growth of my clematis. This was going to be a high visibility structure, so it needed to look like something other than a pallet. So I got creative.
Clematis enjoying the sun and shade provided by this recycled pallet.
If you look around my place, you cannot help but see things that used to be other things. I use them all over the place. I like to think that every time I reuse a pallet, or a window, or a whatever, that is one less thing to go into the landfill. It is also money I don’t have to spend, and I like that.
I hope you enjoy my ideas, and I hope they inspire you to do something with pallets. But, stay away from my pallet source, I have some more ideas for this spring.
