Dropstone Farms

So, network issues at work provided my with a day to research various greenhouse options.

We’ve had such success with the hoophouses that I’m really fired up to get a real greenhouse going in the spring. My first inspiration came from the Westside Gardener whose site is full of Cascadian goodness. Minus incidentals, this is $110 for the frame of a 10′ x 20′ greenhouse. This is awesome. I’m a little concerned about keeping plastic attached in our periodic windstorms and I don’t relish the thought of coming home and finding a springs worth of starts wind damaged. Can’t beat the price though.

What I really want, however, is a shiny, pre-made Solexx greenhouse. I mean, Solexx! It’s got *two* Xs which makes it twice as cool as competing coverings. The deal with solexx is that it’s a semi-rigid double-walled plastic that diffuses sunlight and provides insulation. It’s also fairly expensive at almost $600 to cover a 10×16 greenhouse. It’s got an 8-year warranty though, and I count myself lucky to be able to reuse plastic a second year. Actual greenhouse plastic might last longer though. Plus, solexx wants braces every 16-24″, which means more costs for the frame and more time invested in building the structure.

A third option is clear plastic corrugated panels which cost $30 each. They do have the advantage of being permanent but I haven’t spec’ed out the costs of building a structure robust enough to support a rigid panel that can’t flex in the wind like plastic or Solexx.

My biggest question revolves around whether it makes sense to spring for Solexx? It may be that, in our mild climate, the amount of sunlight is going to limit growth much more than temperature. I’m not planning on heating the greenhouse but I’ll expect to run growlights for seedlings. The other constraint is that I want a semi-portable structure. Lauren and I need to be able to drag the greenhouse around out lot depending on need, soil rotation, and available light. I don’t want to get into anything that would allow justify purchasing one of those tractors I’ve had my eye on.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Requests for starts?

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Rare Crowing Hen — $5.

I haven’t been able to stop giggling since I ran across this ad. (Reproduced here in case the ad goes away)

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The Seattle City Council passed an absolutely lovely resolution about local food incentives and planning policies to encourage urban gardening. Full text is here. Waves at Joe working in the city archives!

The deal with a resolution is that it doesn’t actually *do* anything, but laying out that these are the values of my beloved, troubled, condo-ifing, $6-per-dozen-farmers-market-eggs-buyin’ city makes me very pleased.

In other news, I had a mess of tabs open for a link dump post but my session saver screwed up and I’m digging through my del.icio.us and RSS feeds to put the collection back together.

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Will be figuring out how we want to link out to our kindred-spirit blogs, but for now, here are some I like.

… more to come.

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