Greenhouse Construction and Harvesting Sweetcorn and Tomatoes

Greenhouse Construction

The last three days have been basically like the two days before, building the greenhouses.  It’s a frustrating business when you realise the stretcher bar on the back should be on the front, so much fiddling about to get it released and re-fitted to the front, which caused another pane of glass to break and so on.

Larry came round on Saturday as promised and we carried the greenhouse from next door to the site. An Eden six foot by eight foot. It seems very sturdy and the roof and sides are just two standard two foot (610mm) pieces, so simple easy and cheap.

I then went back and loaded the glass up into the car to deliver around to the site and cut the four by eight beams to exact size and creosoted the ends, having done the beams earlier.

Back home to take the broken panes and a load of other rubbish from next door around to the tip. It’s the least I can do since she gave me the greenhouse, a pile of gardening magazines and a thick Readers Digest 1001 gardening tips book. The poor woman is trying so hard to get the house and garden in some sort of order since the death of her compulsively hording husband. If he thought it might come in useful he kept it. I suppose a relic of a deprived childhood in Poland under the Nazis.

Since we have some great weather I took Monday off (and that’s one of the few benefits of working for yourself) and got the base for the second house constructed.

Had to go to get some pressure treated 2″ X 1″ as the base is lipped, another hour gone, but only a fiver for the wood and then we got the house roughly onto the base.

Harvesting Sweetcorn and Tomatoes

Val came down and harvested the rest of the sweetcorn and some plum tomatoes with the odd break to hold the tape measure for me.

We had some sweetcorn barbequed on Saturday. Our daughter and her chap graced us with a visit, which was nice so it was worth firing up the charcoal. It is so easy to barbecue sweetcorn, leave it in the leaves and bung it on the grill, turning until it is charred on all sides. Unwrap, pop some butter on and eat like you are two years old again.

We also had kebabs with my courgettes, cherry tomatoes and peppers plus a bit of chicken, excellent.

Back to Monday, having got the greenhouse onto the base we were having a trying time getting it square. Since the light was going, we decided a fresh look tomorrow was the best plan. Val began watering her plants and, to be fair, my tomatoes and peppers so it decided to rain. Just enough to make her wet but not any good for potted plants.

Police Reaction

I had two letters today regarding the intruders on the allotment. The first, from the police told me they would not be investigating.  I suppose expecting a visit from Inspector Frost backed up by the CSI team was a little much, but it seems so stark when they tell you they won’t be doing anything. At least they will have it noted on some database, I hope.

The second letter was from Victim Support. I had to smile, expect they have proper victims to spend their time on, so I won’t be wasting their time.