Greenhouse, of DEATH

My most recent hardware addition to the 'garden' was a greenhouse, to protect, nurture and love my plants. How wrong I was...

For the bargain price of just 40 Oxford scholars I became the proud owner of my very own greenhouse. Some assembly required, so I took out the instructions and burnt them then spent the next four hours grunting at it before downloading the document again. 

No tools required? Best be off then...

So after that ordeal I had a greenhouse set up and ready to go. Naturally I wanted to cram it full of everything I possibly could immediately.

Mordehouse

 I had some seeds left over from a pack I bought so planted a few things in recycled food containers from work. They included snow peas, lettuce, sprouts, cacti and saffron. I also moved the luscious plants from the grow box in as they were getting a bit wild. 

A clear winner

I potted the seeds in seedling mix instead of the pods. I still have some of the non-jiffy brand but to be honest won't use them. The jiffy pods are just that much better. The water retention is amazing and replanting with them is a breeze as they clump together nicely where the other variety just turn to dust when opened. 

With everything planted, I positioned it all nicely in the greenhouse and closed the door for the night. Checked in the morning and took myself off to work, as the mercury began to rise. 

After losing several litres of sweat in my bronze-age suit of armour which I ride in I was eager to get into the courtyard ans see how well all the plants did during the day. I had set up a thermometer and hygrometer and was interested to see what difference the greenhouse made. 

It was awful.

The plants were cooked through. 

The temperature was in the high forties with humidity close to 100%, everything was wilted to the ground and the air smelled slightly sweet, a sign that serious damage had been done. I couldn't bring myself to even photograph them. I had had a really rough week and shit couldn't get worse, now I had killed something I'd worked hard for and honestly felt like packing the whole idea in. 

Killed with kindness as they say. 

Shut up they.

Days later, after some careful rehabilitation I managed to get a photo. The indoor plants seemed to have come back much better than the outdoor, a surprise given that the outdoor plants would likely have been subjected to more rugged conditions and be better prepared for adverse weather. The jiffy pots seemed to have saved some lives. 

That day I received a shipment of jiffy pots, 60mm biodegradable pots which you can plant without having to shock the roots of seedling, so I thought I'd try some green-thumb-therapy and re-pot what I could salvage. 

This is a few days later and for the most part they are getting better, albeit with a week's stunted growth. Time will tell how they fare.

Once I managed to get a hold of the heat; leaving the door open during the day and closing it at night, things started to progress nicely. The lettuce have all popped, the sprouts are going wild (in fact I took them out to eat tonight), the cacti are yet to emerge, and to my surprise, three of the five free saffron pods I received have germinated and are growing strongly. 

Can't wait for those flowers!

 - Alex