The $100 Vevor Greenhouse rebuild.

With spring upon us here in South Carolina. Well it's only going to hit 55 degrees today! It was 80 yesterday. Christine and I decided that we need the greenhouse again. As y'all can see in the cover picture, Helene was not kind to our $100 Vevor greenhouse. We shopped on Amazon Ebay and Walmart at new tube style, hard style and at plans for building our own. While we want a hard sided green house, they are very expensive. and like most money is tight. But we need one. The Vevor style while priced right, its week point is it's frame. Now we understand 80mph+ winds is out of its design specs, its frame is pretty flimsy.

We hit the Home Depot and sourced the materials for the new frame. We decided in rebuilding a frame it would also give us a base to build a hard sided green house later on. We used 3/4 inch PVC for the hoops and 2x3 lumber for the frame. Why 2x3's instead of 2x4's? Cost and weight. At the Home Depot in Aiken 2x4's are 3.85 each and the 2x3's are 2.68. We wanted it light enough to move easily. And it really does not need to extra strength of a 2x4. I was considering using a PVC frame, but Oh My Gods that much PVC would have been over 3 times the cost!. The wood framing will serve as a base for when we convert it to a hard side greenhouse. We've priced polycarbonate panels and we'll just buy a few at a time, put them away and have a winter project. As if I need MORE projects!!

Over all we're pretty happy with how it came out. It's not as "poofy" as the original. The metal frame bowed out where the PVC just curves. I am reusing some of the metal poles from the old one to re enforce the PVC so it does not move front and backwards. And we have a sturdy frame to build a hard side greenhouse.

Garden Updates

The garden is almost ready to plant once the weather cooperates. The PVC panels we bought from Repurpose America here in Williston are going to work just fine. They're filled with a mixture of local soil, compost Scots Top Soil from Walmart. And each one will get a bag of Black Kow manure. The panels are 16' by 16" by 1/2" thick. 1 panel makes 1 4x4 box. One of the boxes is 6x3 for tomato plants. Each one is dug into the ground about 4 inches to give more support and to help anchor the box. We did lay a ground cloth before filling the boxes to stop any weeds from growing. . The rest of the garden has a layer of cardboard leaves and pine straw, The idea is in a few years if the boxes wear out we'll have good garden soil and can plant rows.

The gallery above shows the steps I took in filling the boxes, In reality the cost of each box wasn't bad,. $10.50 for the panel for each box 4.87 for the manure, And about 12 bucks for the fill. @ prices for all 10 boxes built and filled was about 220 bucks. A lot of money. But compared to buying premade beds at a box store at 70-100 bucks each. Then the cost of filling them, it is a substantial savings.

Part of the garden we left bare soil. We're going to amend it with manure peat moss and compost and grow corn and potatoes there.

These little beauties are going to be from Christine's herb garden. There will be 3 more frames like this for a total of 12 beds. Making them waist height makes it easier for her to maintain and harvest herbs. For apartment and town house folks you can set these on a couple of pieces of wood or a few bricks to keep from rolling and have raised beds on your balcony or small patio.

In the coming weeks Christine and I with our other site The Medic Shack are putting together a class on Homestead First Aid. A much more in depth First Aid course that includes Herbal first aid, basic and advanced first aid. Minor to moderate trauma. Field wound,care fractures and toxic ingestion. This is not to replace our first responders or hospitals. Its to buy time from the injured. Most of us live WAY out in the woods. A long way from anywhere. An example of where this will come in handy is, Say you're using one of the most dangerous homestead tools. The Chain Saw. You're happily sawing away at downed trees, the saw kicks or slips and you tag your thigh. Clock starts NOW. You now have 2-8 minutes before you bleed out from a severed femoral artery. Average response time in rural areas ranges from 14 to over 30 minutes. Most rural EMS is staffed by outstanding people who love what they do and are volunteers. In the best case scenario, by the time EMS gets to you, you've been gone for 7 minutes.

This is why we're putting together this class. Sure most folks know a bit of first aid. We want to expand that. Living on a homestead in the country is the ultimate life. But it can be very dangerous. Stay tuned! we have the syllabus done. The issue is it would take 2 days to do this course. We'll keep folks updated

Ostara is coming. Skaði's blanket is receding in most parts. The winds are warming and Sunna is 1/4 of the way with her race against the wolves. The planting itch is infecting us all. Hail to Ostara! Hail to Freyr and Freya. May your fertility spread to our crops. Hail to you Thor, May you keep the storms at pay and allow the soft rains to fall. May your gardens be blessed with full and healthy crops!

Don't forget, in Asatru we have a ceremony called Charming of the Plow. It is where we bless the tools we use to grow food and raise our livestock. Use the tools you have well and thank them for the good work they have done.

Until next time.

Chuck and Christine