We used salvaged windows for the glass, salvaged doors, an old deck for 1/2 the floor and the other half is discounted paving stone. The walls that aren't glass are insulated and the north side of the roof is insulated and asphalt shingles. Several back and side windows open, I tie the doors open and there is an automatic venting window in the roof near the ridgeline.

I have electricity, a telephone and fill a 50 g. barrel from a hose for water. I recently added a 3 tiered light stand, I found used and will use my heat mats on it this winter. We built benches from folding table legs and 1x1 deck ballisters spaced out on a wood frame. My potting table is a recycled kitchen counter with new paint and hardware. We built a sliding bin under the sink to store ProMix.

A pool cover goes over it for winter and it's heated to 45-50* at night and attains 80-85* during a sunny day. It's heated with a oil filled electric space heater. In the summer, I lower bamboo shades on the south front windows.

I built it so I could grow perennials from seeds and divisions and start shrubs from cuttings to increase my acre garden (which I do) but it has become a source of income in that I started having a huge plant sale yearly. Starting in Feb. for seeds and March for divisions, I start churning out perennials thru the GH, then coldframe and onto a outdoor holding area until the plant sale. I sold 2,000+ plants in about 6 hours this year!

Your yard, greenhouse and plant sale look so immaculate and well-ordered. A pleasure to look at, and very impressive. My DH perked up his ears when I read your sentence about using the GH to generate income...I told him not to get his hopes up! :-)
Sheri

Well, the generating money from the GH just evolved as I needed some extra income (I only work seasonally)and I needed to keep my acre garden under control. I hope to land a fulltime, year round job eventually and not have to do the sale. It's fortunate that I enjoy propagating but it is an enormous amount of work and I hope to get my life back one day!

John-I don't think I'm using Mike McGroarty's system. I don't know what it is. :) Enlighten me?

Greenhouser-I don't fit all those flats in there at once. I start digging plants from my garden in March or as soon as the ground thaws and make small divisions into 3" pots. I grow them on for a week or two in the GH and as they are quite hardy, then move them out to the coldframe.
When the next batch is ready, I move the coldframe plants outdoors and GH plants to the CF and start all over again.
Since different perennials come up earlier than others, I start digging those first and somehow it all works out in the end.
Of course plants started from seed get a little more TLC and get hardened off more gradually.

It does tend to get a little crowded in there when I'm in full swing.

Then they get moved to the coldframe...

1eyedJack and the Dawg

There's something very encouraging about it all (especially for those of us who are still learning, and have things in, um, a bit more disarray.) :-) I'd come to your plant sale but the drive would be a killer!

The trees are Norway Spruce. My house is a 1926 schoolhouse I'm restoring and the school children planted the trees in 1939 on Arbour Day. I found a history book about the schools of my County and mine was in the book with that tidbit of information.

That has got to be a lot of work. Very time consuming. That's why I stopped propagating pond and swamp plants.

Question: In reading your process of potting divisions in the greenhouse then on to the coldframe, etc...do you also have to use any kind of pool cover/insulation for your coldframe on really nippy nights?

Squirrellypete

Can I pick your brain since you actually went to school for this? I see your starting Canna's in there and I am bringing in a lot of my gardening plants into my gh for the winter. Are Cannas good to keep in the gh overwinter, or should I hack them down and dig up the bulbs til next spring? I brought some in last year and the foilage lived, but didn't seem to grow or flower. And how about Elephant Ears? I have about the same temps in the gh as you. Heater set to come on at 50 degrees and exhaust fans come on at 85 degrees.

thanks for any comments and your pics are great.

p.s. I tried to visit your homepage (from your bio)and it said the account it locked. Is your homepage gone?

Squirrellypete-I don't require any additional covering over the coldframe at that time of the spring. I'm moving perennials out there that were already starting to come up before I dug and divided them, so they are quite hardy.

Jaime-I sell 3" pots for $1, 6-8" pots for $2, quart pots for $3.
I cut back, dig and store my cannas in the basement for winter. I pot them up by late March to get them going for summer. Cannas and EE's are slow to get growing with cool temps in the greenhouse at night; they love heat. If I have room, I put them on my heat mats but that doesn't happen too often.
I used to have a photo album of garden pictures at Yahoo that I posted on my Bio but they stopped hosting photos recently. I'm starting to build some albums again at Photobuckets but it's slow going with dialup service.

J nail-Good luck with your Greenhouse/Nursery course. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in school at the CC where I took the Horticulture Apprenticeship Program. I really used my space in the greenhouse and took home all kinds of plant material afterwards. Cuttings of burning bush, mock orange, purple sandcherry, silverleaf dogwood, blue mist, butterfly bushes, threadleaf cypress are now mature size shrubs in my garden.

Over the years a sliding door replaced the swinging one, more windows were added, a rose arbour on the front and a wisteria arbour over the entrances. My horse passed away to the great pasture in the sky and the shed became a studio for me to make cement stepping stones and my partner to create metal garden sculptures. We added track lighting and folding wall tables for displaying things when on the local Studio Tour. We found a cute-as-a-button woodstove but it won't be hooked up until the roof is replaced.
Oh, I also park my motorcycles in there. :)

Became this:

I wanted to begin tying the looks of all my various buildings together so this spring we started residing the shed to match the greenhouse, tractor/pot shed and house addition.
We used the same dark green stained barnboard, added another sliding door on the opposite side so I can drive my bikes straight thru and the crowning touch was new cedar doors that contrast nicely with the green. The cedar was "rescued" from an old sauna that was being torn down. We still have some left and I'd like to build a cupola from it for the shed.
Now:

I stained the nearby covered gateway to match and we replaced the rotted posts on the wisteria arbour. This week, I dug and installed a small pond near the door. It will have water bubbling up thru a mill stone and cascading over the edge. I still need to add rocks and plants and run the pump electrical wires thru the wall. With a heat element, we may get it running this winter.

I'm finally bringing it all together and finding a place for some of the various decorative items, like the old wheels, that I've had kicking around for years.
I'm still stripping the sod to enlarge the front garden and wrap it around to the new back entrance. I'll dig in compost when done and plant it up next spring with a ornamental cherry tree, some shrubs and lots of bulbs and perennials.

Ladylotus-we just both have "life experience" carpentry skills. LOL! I just bought a crow bar, sledge hammer, skill saw and a construction book when I bought this property 12 years ago and waded into it. When I met Doug 7 years ago I was just fortunate that he was such a handy guy and enjoyed these projects too.
Actually, my neighbours were pretty doubtful when a lone 34 y/o woman moved into "their" school and started throwing lumber and plaster out the window (especially when she pulled her Harley out of the shed in the spring, hehe) but now they're pretty approving and thrilled that someone that loves the old place is fixing it up.

Our last home was a 1930's farmhouse we spent 13 years restoring. Not a historical structure (like yours) in any sense, but over the years I kept a messy folder with tidbits of info about previous owners or the house. Articles in county history books, deeds from the courthouse, etc. One day a woman walked into our shop and said her family had owned it in the 1940's, and she gave us xeroxed family photos taken in the yard. We were thrilled!

When we put the house up for sale, I organized all the stuff and put it in a notebook with a 1940 photo on the cover. In the back was a list of previous owners, with a blank space for the new owner. I think the documented history helped the appeal of the place (the appraiser turned out to be an old house/history buff, can't hurt!) More importantly, the information is saved for the future. All those great stories get lost in the mists of time if no one ferrets them out like you have. Good for you! :-)

BetsyBr

Betsybr- I'll try to email you a couple pictures.

The bird feeding "station" has cabin, tower and suet feeders in the winter with mixed, sunflower and niger seed.

My Savanah Girl statue was bought in Florida, so the cement used to make her is not winter safe. She is laid down for the winter to make sure she does not crack from water freezing in her bowls.

The large white martin house is an antique-over 60 years old and restored after being rescued from a local farm.

The main arbour was built from salvaged hydro poles. The smaller arbours are built from old cedar rail fencing.

Someday all the windows in my old schoolhouse home will be restored to full size again.

sigh

Very nice, very nice in deed! Great balance of nature/sculptures.

I was told that you can put a small block of foam in the bowl to take up water's expansion and thus prevent cracking the bowl.

dcarch

"

Marisha-I've answered your email but I forgot to say I use ProMix (a commercial non-soil blend of peat, perlite, vermiculite, plus a small shot of fertilizer) for my seed starting and sticking cuttings. I buy the largest bag of it, it comes compressed in plastic "bales". It cost about $25 a bale here but could possibly be cheaper in the States.
That would be pretty expensive for potting for the plant sale though, so when potting I use compost obtained from the municipality and mix it with ProMix. Around a 4 to 1 ratio. The compost by itself is too dense and heavy. The ProMix lightens it up nicely. The plants are only in that mixture for a few months at the most,until they are sold and planted by someone.

Ohgirl-thanks for asking about winter photos. It's taken quite a few years of planning and planting for things to finally start having winter interest as well as summer flowers. I've been here 12 years and had to plant everything but the 70 year old spruces that ring the property. It was literally a blank slate.

Zengeos-I'm so glad I had those old spruce trees to start off with. I'm surrounded by empty farm fields in the winter. Talk about monotony! I've planted well over 300 shrubs and ornamental trees over the last 12 years. Some are finally getting to be a nice size.
Some fast growing ones are silver leaf dogwood, purple leaf sandcherry, viburnams, burning bush, spireas. Now I'm concentrating on things like magnolias, redbuds, japanese maples, hydrangeas, rhodos etc. I'm changing my garden into a woodland! :)

Dcarch-thanks for the tip on the foam. I've heard the same thing about placing a chunk of wood also. The bowls Savannah Girl are holding are quite shallow and I value her quite dearly so I prefer not to take a chance with her cracking. I thought about bringing her into the shed for the winter but she is also quite heavy, so I just lay her down. A friend owns a cement lawn ornament company and she advised me to do this rather than try and cover her with plastic, which would collect condensate on sunny days and then freeze at night.

You can also get a very small carbide drill bit to drill a small hole in the bowl to drain out water in the winter, and plug the hole when you need to fill the bowl with water.

dcarch

Of course, the 8 upright willows in front...30' tall in 5 years not bad! helps give privacy in the summer (going to use branches from these in making some fedge structures this year, I think...

I also have a half dozen River Birch I planted as whips... several are almost 15 feet high and have quite pretty bark year round.
.

Still, compared to your plot mine looks barren!!! especially in Winter.

In a couple or 3 years, I hope this changes dramatically as the new beds mature.

My game plan is to continually expand my flower AND vbeggie beds. I've doubled both in size this year (actually tripled flower beds) and plan to double the flower gardens again next year. The beautiful thing is I am reaching a momentum where I have the basic fill plants...day lilies, hostas, and other hardy, easy to grow plants and just need to broaden my species.

You won't believe how fast your garden will mature in a few years. It's always surprising to look at photos that are a couple years old. Trees and shrubs seemingly grow without you ever noticing until you see an old photo.

Some well placed structures or art is important to giving the garden some winter interest as well. My garden is 1 acre in size and seemed very empty in the winter until I started building arbours, the GH and placing statues, bird houses and feeders, large pots and items of sculptural interest like a few farm wheels and implements. I didn't want things to look too cluttered-I'm aiming for a more formal, woodland look eventually. I admire the English estate gardens with mature trees and plantings and well placed art.

Pic here:

http://photos.ivillage.com/images/photos/resize/gardenweb_Garden Gal leries_1199193743654_278944D.jpg

This pic was taken in June. Since then I've torn the path apart and spread the existing plants out, while turning the whole thing into a fall bulb garden. Never done much with bulbs before, so not sure what I'll get come Spring, but it's a solid start. Put in a 2'tall flat fieldstone wall, as well as a timber wall 3' high by about 15' wide on the side of the house.

My thinking is, money and time and energy permitting I want to build a trellis out of copper pipe, as well as a simple freestanding trellis to go somewhere not yet decided upon yet.

Much of my time has been on the foundation *bones* the fieldstone walk, the 8x10 freestanding deck on the side, the retaining walls, and such. So much I want to do, so little time....

I like your iris's. And I love the amount of woodland you have in the background! Is that your property also? I would be making paths thru there, adding understory ornamental trees like redbuds, dogwoods, service berries, rhodos and making hosta beds with other woodland plants. :)

Here's a link to your garden photo Zengeos. Garden web doesn't automatically turn urls into clickable links.

DG

thanks for any tips!!

I have to say I don't think the sliding glass doors would make very good cold frame lids. They a VERY heavy and would be difficult to lift. I also know from experience that the wind loves to grab stuff like that and fling it around. (Even the polycarbonate lids have been grabbed and ripped off before we devised a system that both props them open and holds them down, with broom sticks and bungee cords) I would hate to see the same thing happen to glass lids!

You could, perhaps, use them as the back wall of the cold frame and try to find something else to use as the lids. Even a wood frame with plastic sheeting stapled to it.

Connie

Love your whole setup

Maureen

How did your plant sale go this year? And where oh where do you store all those plants after they come out of your coldframe?

I would love to do something like this! Where do you advertise for your sale?

Thanks for your continued comments. We've been busy this summer doing a little maintenance to the GH and the latest project which is making formal raised beds where the veggie garden once was in front of the GH.

Christieb-After 7 years of having the plant sale, I decided not to have one this year. I actually spent the whole winter and spring preparing for it, with tons of plant material, then a couple weeks before I would have started advertising I got a wonderful, full time, year round job!
The job is as a gas fitter for a natural gas distribution company and involves spending every other week in another city undergoing training all summer. So I decided I didn't have time and in fact, financially, I no longer needed to sell plants to make ends meet.
I still ended up selling almost everything on my little cart at the end of the driveway and had great fun giving away perennials to all my friends, relatives, coworkers, strangers on the street etc etc. LOL! I was like the Perennial Santa Claus. :)

Here's my little cart...

And here's my new raised beds just after we built them in May. There is a patio stone sidewalk to them and between them and there will be one between the GH and raised beds this fall too.
This area has always been deep with snowdrifts in the winter and collects water in the spring so it will be nice to have a solid walkway to shovel and walk on in the wet seasons.

Oh...and I stored the thousands of perennials, as they came out of the coldframe, on a woodchipped area in the corner of the yard near the GH. It would get preeeety crowded there before the sale. :)
And I advertised by posting flyers in all the small towns around my rural location, in the city 25 miles away and in 2 local newspapers. Also, after a few years I had tons of repeat customers that would tell their friends...word of mouth was a big bonus. I also started an email list and notified those on it about a month before the sale.