Love this site. Here’s what I plan on building and planting for next year.



I have the greenhouse built.



Now I have to pour the 6’ x 8’ slab. Reason for the slab is because of all the fire ants we have here. Hopefully the slab will help to keep them out of the garden beds. Also, it will make stacking the blocks very easy

Hi and welcome to NGA! Looks great! I can't get the lightbox link to work. Can you post a photo of your greenhouse here?

I bought a Palram PTX002-1; 6’ x 6’ greenhouse. Wife and I are retired now so it should suit us just fine. Here's a picture of it

I am so glad I found this site, am really enjoying reading all the useful information here. And everyone is so friendly. Made three batches of soil for my greenhouse containers using this recipe:
Ingredients
• 3 GALLONS peat moss
• 2 GALLONS perlite
• 1 GALLON COW MANURE compost
• 1 GALLON MUSHROOM compost
• 1 cup bone meal
• ½ cup agricultural lime
Gonna try and grow some peas, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, radishes, and carrots through the winter in the greenhouse. Tomorrow, I harvest my first batch of worm castings.

Got my greenhouse up and running now! Potting soil is mixed and ready for planting.









Hurray! My winter greenhouse garden has begun. Got my seeds Saturday the 4th. Began soaking them Sat night.





36 hrs later this many sprouted





7 radishes(cherry belle)
5 lettuce (black seeded simpson
3 lettuce (buttercrunch)
1 carrot (petite sweet little finger)
2 broccoli (de cirro)
1 pea (sugar snap edible pod)
1 cauliflower (early snowball y)

Very Nice set-up, Gardener Bob!

Welcome to the website.

May I ask, "why are you starting carrots indoors in cups?" Is it too cold out for you to sprinkle the seeds on their final growing location?

My entire crop is going to be inside the greenhouse. I realized after I put it in the cup that I should of planted the carrot in its container. Will move it there as soon as it is established in the cup.

Very nice greenhouse.... I also thought you might be doing seed starting for outdoors planting. I will say the root vegetables like carrots and radishes don't transplant well so you might try moving them to the bed before they get established. I wish you the best and hope to follow your success.

The stuff- chemical- released from cinder brix is fly ash. Its possible to paint or line inside the bricks if its a concern. Watch your calcium levels in a raised bed- those cinder brix contribute zero.
Love the mushroom compost. Cow compost too- but if you buy by the bulk from Monterrey mushroom, that chicken poo and straw can build huge plants and do more growing than producing. Gardner Bob is right about fire ants, but its an ongoing fight as they find hi ground in every rain. We also have moles- the bottom of my bed is edged with metal fabric and the bricks set on top of the fabric.
Down here the only stuff I can bring in as bulk disintegrates to fine silt sand. Since I originally did not line the beds with plastic, watering draws the tree roots.

Not hijacking the thread, honest injun, trying to think back over my trials. This year I am cutting back the height of the bed and creating a lower half. Watering my beds waters the trees- no bottom liners. Houston has had 3) 500 yr floods this year. I could just imagine a closed bed becoming a swamp, so chose no liner. My daughter and I mixed peat, cow manure, and vegetable garden soil in bulk, mixed the lower layers. I found the water drained too fast at the original height, and if that soil gets dry, well, it repels water. Then it leaches across in to lower levels plants cant reach. My fern leaf dill volunteers every fall. Herbs love the fast drying soil, but want to hug the cinder bricks. Basil needs more water at such depth, so did the tomatoes. The heigth and depth to protect from moles is 8" down, 4" above soil level.

I did try a hugelkulture bed. Not a success by any means. It started off well, but wood in wet sand doesn't rot unless there's air. It simply sucks moisture away from the wood. I had to dig it out, it took a really hot bonfire to burn. This bed a mole got into, I don't know how as its protected by a trench and wire, but I cant move him out and he tunnels to every root and leaves it open to his tunnel air. I plan on getting something done now I have retired.

kittriana said:I did try a hugelkulture bed. Not a success by any means. It started off well, but wood in wet sand doesn't rot unless there's air. It simply sucks moisture away from the wood. I had to dig it out, it took a really hot bonfire to burn

Thanks for sharing your experience with hugelkultur - I've been thinking about it for my raised beds. My area and soil are different than yours but it's worth reconsidering - not wanting to dig it out or burn it down

A hugelkulture needs containement here, our moisture doesn't support that as well as cooler climates, and different soils. In Louisiana- sw? Like Charleytown or Abbeville is, you might have issues, but hugelkulture can do awesome bogs- if you can fight the skeeters, chuckl.

I've already had it with mosquitos here....ought to be the state bird. And bogs, not on my list - the sw side of the house is a moat when it rains hard and fast so I don't want to encourage standing water anywhere else...oh well. At least its warm here and no snow

Catherine, do you still have mosquitoes around, or do you mean during the summer? We have them pretty bad here. We did get a Dyna Trap and it helped a lot with the problem this year. I make sure we have no standing water on our property but we have natural ponds all around our area breeding them. These ponds dry up during droughts, so they don't have fish any more to eat the larva.

This is Houston. NMex has nothing near this humidity. We use dunks. Since Zika and Niles brew here, the area gets sprayed, but our dew alone can generate a cloud of skeeters. Where in NM are you- up near the Sandias? Or down by Las Cruces? Loved NM when I lived there. Loved running Farmington to Clovis heading home from SaltLake too.

I'm near Silver City, NM. Even though we're dry humidity wise, we get a lot of mosquitoes every summer. I also fight them in my greenhouse, and I have a pond of fish in there with mosquito fish to eat the larva. I think they mostly breed in the damp soil of the raised beds and pots.

we moved from the upper midwest to LA a couple of months ago...the mosquitos were so bad on Halloween that I considered going to the urgent care. I got chewed up despite long sleeves/pants and spray. Oh, and we're now in a subdivision so there is nightly spraying by the town. Nasty buggers literally. I'm not even filling bird baths and knock water over if it fills leaves or whatever. Lived here 40 years ago and do not remember them being so awful. I hate spraying poison but you can't really sit outside- they attack!