Category Archives: Blog

This is not a giant tampon. It’s a roll of greenhouse plastic.

Greenhouse plastic arrived last week! YEAH! A couple of the projects that lie ahead of me in this new greenhouse venture include covering the framework of the little dome with greenhouse plastic as well as re-covering the water tables with said plastic. Not really that difficult but still, it’s some work to do. See, the last folks in here used your standard untreated UV painting plastic – and no matter how thick that stuff is, it WILL break down when exposed to the sun over the course of the season. It breaks down to some flaky hell of a glorious mess. It’s like taking a stale croissant and repeatedly smooshing it then tossing those crumbs all over the greenhouse in a “making it rain” fashion. Broken down plastic isn’t quite as tasty as stale smooshed crumbly croissants though.

Here’s the little greenhouse frame to the left.  I plan on making this a Nepenthes house, as well as maybe a place for cuttings or other things that would appreciate higher humidity. Maybe throw some Heliamphora up in there too. It’s so great to have this micro climate inside The Asylum. Nepenthes will be another genus that I’ll be exploring in the not so distant future! (Yeah, there goes my savings…) I’m glad that I have space to grow them now at least. The one thing that still needs to be worked on here is that sprinkler system. You can see the PVC pipes on the table, but those are linked to another water system that’s pretty high in PPM, and not on the standard city water that’s clean. This system is automated and fully programmable as well, which is a very nice plus for me!

Before I can do any covering here, I must clean up those weeds! To the right, you can see some of the weeds that have been growing under the benches. Gotta clean that outta here! Not just because I like to have stuff clean, but it’s for good growing hygiene. Those weeds are mos ‘def fugly and make my growing experience fugly-fied! They have the potential to harbor pests and diseases. In fact, there was still some whitefly on a few of those weeds! Dahlia and I spent a good part of the other day pulling these things. And HELL NO I don’t want to use Round Up cuz that stuff will jack your lungs – especially inhaling that stuff in enclosed spaces. After we pulled as much of those weeds out, I went back in and sprayed an organic weed killer used inside and along the footprint of this greenhouse. For weed control, I’ve also heard that vinegar works wonders, so that’s something that I’ll play around with in the future. I’ll have to continually keep the weeds in check, but it will be worth it to get this all under control. Oh, weeding is just one of the joys of gardening. Good times. After we get this cleaned up, I’ll start to trim the plastic and get that up and over the house!