Had a good weekend

For a couple years now I have wanted to build myself a sturdy little greenhouse to start my plants in. Every year I put up a temp 5'x15'x5' high little hoop house and always run out of space. With all this warrm weather and not daring to put anything out yet I decided to go for it. I was going to place gravel on the plastic weed block, but since I do not have any gravel right now and do have a ton of old brick and river rock, I will be using them as pavers for the floor. Got a good start on it, still a lot to do. Regular old EMT, 12'x20'x6'6' high, designed to start 5-600 plants in 18 cell trays, 3.5x3.5 cells. I hate potting up.......



I also plowed up a new place for the sweet corn. Something changed about half way through and instead of turning it over bout all I could do is get it to stand on end. Never did figure it out. Made disking a bit exciting but the old JD drag disk made short work of it.



Yes that's my little ford 4000 industral. I just couldn't bring myself to paint it yellow......

You're a person after my heart, I like your greenhouse. Here's my "greenhouses". I used 3 wood wheelbarrows and a small trailer with plastic clipped on, move them into the garage when it frosts overnight. I started tomatoes in mid Feb. and they'd like to be in the ground. You mentioned your plow not turning sod completely over. In the old days my dad's plows had extensions bolted on the back of the moldboards to give the sod an extra push to roll it over.

Great looking job! How did you bend the EMT so pretty? Could you post a few close-ups of how it was attached together? Thanks for posting. Mark

On the back side of an out building I setup a template of the bows by using wood blocks to form the arch. I had planned to splice them together with a short piece of pipe and screws. Where the brace pipes met, I had planned to split the ends, flatten each side, and form to the connecting pipe. Everything would be held together with self tapping screws. It did not turn out they way I wanted it to. Where the splice was on the bow it pulled apart enough to expose corners. The places the pipes met were loose and there was just to much slop and sharp edges on it.

So I moved to plan B. I welded up a 20’ bow (inserted a splice and welded two sticks together) and put it in the jig to form the bow. Another issue I had on the first round was when I pulled the bow out of the jig it would relax a bit and made connecting things up a bit tricky. So on this round I left it in the jig and tacked welded the braces in place. This is a later picture where I had incorporated the blocks for the braces. I used a piece of tin behind the area I was tacking and just tacked the front side. Pull it out of the jig, flip it around, stuff it back in the jig, and tack the back side. Then I could remove it from the jig and everything stayed in place and I just had to finish welding it together. Everywhere I was welding I scrubbed the galvanize off. When done I wire brushed and repainted it with that paint for touching up galvanized metal. This method also ensured that each one was the same.



The two ends are different from the centers. Centers were designed to incorporate the tables for the plants. This way each bow has its own internal bracing and the starts will be off the ground.

This is going to be one of those post that I'll end up printing as a pdf for later use.


Great job!

Nice job. Ingenuity at it's best. Jim

Nice job. Ingenuity at it's best. Jim