The Garden Shedde

Are you still cramming valuable belongings into already-full closets and spare bedrooms? Why? Perhaps you know a secret I don’t know, but when I store items that way, they never maintain their new appearance or their value. They end up getting squished or bent or dented or folded or crumpled in the bottom of a closet floor, while newer things pile up on top of them. Why not consider an inexpensive plastic shed? Here are a few advantages you might not have considered before:

1. You aren’t paying to heat or cool your shed, so you could even downsize your home and save money and be a greener planetary citizen as well.
2. You can access your belongings more efficiently, reducing the stress and clutter in your home.
3. You will increase the amount of usable space inside your home. Things like having a guest stay with you will no longer be an embarrassment.

So before you shove the picnic supplies back in the overflowing hall closet, think about how a shed could make your life – and your house – better.

Some mornings it’s hard for me to tear away from the beautiful garden that is living and growing just beyond my patio in my back yard. I work from home, so it is way too easy to put off going back in the house and geting down to the work I must do. On those mornings, I wish that I could just sit among the flowers, butterflies and hummingbirds, maybe with my laptop or my phone, and do what was required of me. In fact, I am now looking at what it would take to convert a relatively unused metal shed into a sort of remote office in my back yard. This particular shed has a large window facing the sunny spot in the garden, and it is slightly elevated above the rest of the yard, so it catches the cool breezes quite nicely. It’s a little far away from the house to get a good internet signal, but my techie griends tell me that is easily solved, and I believe them. I have an old desk and chair I could put out there, and who knows? I might just create another little nook for working, close to the plants and animals I just have a hard time saying good-bye to every morning! Thoughts?

What I am about to tell you is very general and will not apply to some plants in some regions and you will need to make sure that what you are planting will have a good chance to grow wherever you live.  Then these general rules will apply. If you follow these general rules you can and will grow most anything that you choose.  Here is what a plant needs:

• Good soil
• Sun
• Water
• Fertilizer
• Weed

They need all of this to not only survive, but to thrive. You need to know that in a raised bed you can easily control your soil but you will need more water because it dries out before an in ground plant will as the ground holds water better.  This is also true of any type of plant that is “out of the ground” including potted plants and hanging plants. All plants need sunshine. Some can withstand a full day while others will wither under full sun.  Read the labels and follow them. Just plant the plants where they get the amount of sun they need.  Fertilize every 7 to 14 days and watch everything grow and bloom and keep the weeds out.  It really is that easy!

The truth is greenhouses are a thing of the past but they may also be one of the best things to have in the future as well.  Let’s face it; greenhouses have been around for a long time.  It’s thought that they were invented by the Romans in order to bring fresh vegetables to the emperors on a year round basis. They were very small and were heated with hot rocks throughout the winter. I’m sure no one really wanted that job!

Today, with the advent of plastic technologies, you can easily have a greenhouse in your own backyard. There are also builders and developers around the world who are experimenting with delivering heat in the winter throughout a home with the heat generated by a greenhouse.  Wouldn’t that be nice; grow our own food while heating your entire home!  Since green houses are made in so many convenient shapes and sizes almost anyone can benefit from owning one. You can simply extend your growing season with an inexpensive plastic greenhouse or purchase a very well insulated grow house to grow food during the harshest of winters. You can find whatever it is you’re looking for when it come to a garden greenhouse.

Having a bed of some kind to dedicate to growing asparagus is a great way to get started.  However, you will have to be patient in order for the asparagus to have several seasons to establish a good root system.  Harvesting to much too soon will hurt the long term success of the asparagus bed.  So the bottom line is you must wait for the plant to mature.  If you do, you will be rewarded for many years to come.

The asparagus spears can be harvested the first two weeks of the second spring when they are six to ten inches tall.  Do not cut the spears off; snap them off near the ground.  On the third spring through the sixth spring, you can harvest throughout the first month.  Starting the seventh spring (that’s right 7 years!) you can harvest the spears for two months.  If 75% of the new spears are the diameter of a pencil, stop harvesting.  This means the asparagus needs to develop stronger root systems and to do that it will need to develop summer foliage.  As with all vegetables; keep it well watered and weeded.

The last few years we have been dealing with drought situations but this tear we are inundated with rain pretty much day in and day out.  Two weeks ago the flowers were just starting to bloom and today every bloom and potential bloom has been pelted off with hard hitting rain or hail.  If I have to choose one or the other, I would choose the rain.

I have lived out West in terrible drought conditions as well the Deep South, which is still struggling with lack of rain even though its neighbors directly north are literally drowning in some areas.  It’s too bad we can’t get the water to run into those other areas!  I’m not sure what we did before the Weather Channel either.  I find myself watching at least once a day so I can plan everything around what will be happening in my area.  I tend to watch the “local on the 8’s” way more than once and can never figure out why. Oh well, it’s better than a lot of other things I’ve seen on TV lately and it always answers the question; what’s up with this weather?

If you are one of those people that have decided to grow your own food, you may experiment with several ways to accomplish this.  One is with raised beds and the other is by using a greenhouse.  If a garden greenhouse is your choice then you will need to determine if you just want to extend the growing season or do you want to grow vegetables and herbs on a year round basis.  What ever you decide will have a direct impact on which type of green house you will want to buy or build.

If you are simply extending the growing season you can get by with an inexpensive hobby greenhouse, especially if you are in a moderate climate.  If you want to grow year round, then you will need a very good insulated greenhouse with a good greenhouse heater to keep your growing house at a steady temperature throughout the cold months.  If you are in a colder climate this just becomes even more important and the cheaper greenhouses don’t have the insulation value to hold the temperature in for these extremely cold climates.  Once you make a decision about what you want to accomplish with your greenhouse then you can build or buy the perfect greenhouse for you and your family.