Keeping the garden warm

So what do you do to keep the garden warm ? Put your old radiators out in it and create a centrally heated sculpture. Not that we needed much heat in Lluc monastery botanical garden in early September.

A pane in the....................greenhouse

This greenhouse came with a unique glazing method called bar capping. The traditional method is small square panes which are held on top of one another with glazing clips. The bar capping method enables whole lengths of glass to be place into the glazing bars by using same length strips of plastic 'capping', essentially something which screws down onto the glazing bar enabling the edging of the capping to hold the panes firmly in place.

Of course this is all dependent upon the frame being absolutely square and given that Gnome was just a half smidgin out of kilter then one or two were not as tight as they should be. This is where good old silicon glazing caulk comes in handy.

Shoogling ( a good old Scots phrase that describes the act of moving things round to put them in place or make them fit) the panes into place was a challenge and trusting the strength and resilience of strengthened glass was the trick to this. Strengthened glass apparently is at it weakest on its corners. So accidently banging it on concrete on its corner while moving it about can shatter the whole pane. What we discovered was that on its straight edge, it could cope with quite a lot of gentle shoogling to ease it into place between the glazing bars.

Not one pane was lost you will be pleased to hear.

Another icon from the Monastery Garden

Gnome came across this obscure pagan statue in the botanical garden at Lluc monastery in Mallorca. Would you believe that the monks would have sunk to this level ? A dame of a different sort - keeping the demons out of the woods. I need one immediately for the allotment !

Volunteers welcome to translate the notice board, my Catalan (and Majorquese) is so bad I cannot understand much at all.

The greenhouse saga so far................

So, back to the blog. It has so far taken four weekends and sundry half hours straight from work before the light fades to get this thing erected. I likened it to my American dream that by the age of forty most Americans had built their log cabin and moved on to a second career. Well, at the age of sixty I have completed my greenhouse ........ still waiting to decide on the next career move !

Was it difficult ? It certainly was not easy. The patience of Job and the discipline of a civil engineer, and the help of your next door neighbours as well as the love of your wife - these are key elements in this construction.

Would I do anything different ? I would probably go back to the very beginning and think twice about the base and the requirements for anchoring the aluminum greenhouse base. This picture illustrates the issue. Anchoring can be in soft earth using post cement (which sets quickly) to fill in the hole. This is achieved by using the whole length of the corner angle plates and the plates that join base lengths together if you have ordered a 10 foot greenhouse. Or, like me you can choose to build on a solid slab foundation with the intention of drilling holes and screwing the base down. If you chose the latter method then the four corner angles and the plates that join the lengths, all have to be cut down to size using a hacksaw. I purchased a new hacksaw for the occasion and also found my late father in law's clamp which was duly fitted onto an old picnic table used for these odd jobs. Cutting alminum was not an easy task. Neither was it easy to keep it square. The end result is that the hacksaw blade is now smooth as a baby's bottom. But it also cost me about four hours of cutting time.

Consequently, this the start of the construction was also the most mind numbing part. Why could the manufacturers not consider this and for the benefit of both methods, include the finished article without the need for cutting ? Now there's a good idea.

Watch this space for more chapters on the construction.

"....this much maligned vegetable."

Nigel, the Observers culinary agony uncle, raises the game on this embraceable vegetable. The marrow, not the kale.