working with me
I recently made my garden into a greenhouse. While I was out working in my greenhouse to insulate it with a second layer of plastic, I had a surreal but pleasant experience. Surprisingly enough, I just had the subtly peaceful sense of my greenhouse plastic working with me, helping me if you will.
I am working on a sustainable winterlong garden in my garden area which is now a greenhouse space. In a previous post I outlined the whole long process of even getting to this point.
www.yeah-youcan.com/blog/mygreenhousemygarden
(Nerd alert)The current issue is that the single-layer plastic, though very thick and durable UV plastic, is still just that, a single layer of plastic. I now know that it needs to be dual layers for proper heat retention. The plastic as I have it now is hardy, but not enough.
It’s strong enough that it made it through the storm winds and parachuting over to the neighbors, but the ability to retain the heat created is also needed. Apparently, the single layer not only absorbs the heat in the day, but also releases it at night! It’s quite literally the same concept as insulation in a house or dual panes on a window.
My greenhouse reaches 100 degrees fahrenheit if it's 45 degrees outside with the sunshine and 85 degrees fahrenheit if it's 30 degrees outside in the sun. At night though, it's only 5-10 degrees fahrenheit warmer than outside the greenhouse.
To garden in the winter, I need 24 hours of warmth. If it's a cloudy day, the heat transfer to the inside doesn’t increase as much as when the sun is out. Not too shabby transfer and expansion of those heat particles.
But the problem is, it lets go of the heat as fast as the sun goes down. The greenhouse/ garden becomes just shy of freezing during the night. To help this, I also added composting piles and a chicken coop in the same space, but it doesn’t help as much as I hoped. I’m still learning composting though.
Because I’ve learned that I need a second layer to keep in more heat and I bought wildly too much plastic covering, I have a plan. I’ve set out now, to cut off the extra plastic left over at the foot of the structure.
I’m still leaving extra plastic all the way around the ground edges, tucked under the piping to hold in the heat and hold out the wind and cold. It’s cool how just a large piece of special plastic starts to create its own environment.
I’ve placed plants in pots on those feet of extra plastic to keep it in place during the wind. Now with part of the cut off extra, I wrapped it along the inside of the structure piping to be a second layer.
Of course there’s not enough, so I also bought bubble wrap to fill in wherever there's not enough leftover plastic. I am now in the process of finishing my 2nd layer. Each time I water the garden, I do a bit more at the same time.
As you might imagine, it's not always intuitive or easy to pull it up and put it through the insides along the pipe frame underneath the outer covering. In fact holding, piling and pulling long swaths of plastic is awkward and cumbersome.
I need to alternately lift and slide the 2nd layer of plastic around the 1st layer. It’s a bit of work. I have some 2x6 wood, extra expanding ladders and 2, three foot round buckets holding the roof section of the plastic down against the wind now.
These items are heavy enough to hold against the wind and light enough not to collapse my frame nor to be ineffective. They are a great temporary securing of the roof and very effective to keep the ballooning from happening with any small amount of wind.
Yes, there’s some story behind this contraption set up, but for now, it’s working while I work out my self engineered greenhouse space. So, with these materials at my disposal I actually felt like the plastic was choosing to work with me, bending to my ask, so to speak.
Now, mind you, it was just a sense, perhaps intuition. I had no visual of plastic moving itself; but the work was super smooth and easygoing for a good minute. It was almost as if the universe was helping me in my pursuit.
It was like the plastic was helping me thread it through the structure inside. It was easy to work through, far more than expected. Even saying it out loud sounds a little out there to me too. But seriously, it felt like that!
I’ve experienced this sense before, not often mind you (I’m only crazy in minute amounts). All in all, it's a cool feeling to feel like the earth elements are in sync and following along with my desire and efforts, so to speak. It really was interesting and at that moment it was hard, but seemed natural and easy.