Nana's New Greenhouse Kit
THE PORCH HOUSE
We gave Nana a greenhouse for Mother’s Day this year! It’s one of those kits you have to put together (no small feat, it turns out) and now that it’s done, I wanted to share.
Nana is an avid gardener, to put it mildly. And when she traded 20 acres in the country for a 75oo-sf city lot four years ago, she turned her basic ho-hum backyard into a garden delight, complete with chicken coop, compost station, and raised beds. She produces quite a bit of food—seems like enough to feed a small army! from area that takes up roughly half of the backyard. We score endless baskets of produce all season long and then get to enjoy preserves like jars of pickled tomatoes, jellies, and salsas through the cold times.
One thing Nana was missing for her garden was a large spot to start seeds. She gets hundreds of seeds going early in the Spring and the stacks of seed trays in her sunroom had started to overtake her house. So the greenhouse is the perfect addition.
BTW that’s Nana’s famous compost on the left (she shared her process with us here) and on the right of the greenhouse is a chicken run and coop that Garrett built a couple of years back. Nana’s still working on the brick patio around the greenhouse and she’s planning to put bark chips over the cardboard between the coop and compost. But a few lingering projects hasn’t stopped her from making the most of the her new greenhouse…
Assembly
The greenhouse assembly is like an IKEA dresser on steroids! It takes a solid day of at least 2 people to put it together, and that’s after the foundation is completed. For the foundation, Garrett and his dad used cinder blocks and pressure-treated 2x6” around the perimeter. They also laid down a landscape fabric barrier to keep weeds down and then backfilled with 5/8” minus gravel. A layer of soft and playful pea gravel topped of the base.
Would we buy the Canopy greenhouse kit again?
Would we buy the Canopy kit again? I think so. It’s only been up for about a week, but so far seems to be well-built and strong. It comes in a lot of different sizes, which makes it really flexible. My biggest complaint is that the panels are plastic (common in these kits) and that the whole setup seems pretty expensive (also common with these kits). Note that we bought it back in March and it was $130 cheaper - so winter or early Spring might be the time to buy these greenhouse kits!
Thanks for sharing your garden with us, Nana!
