Last December I posted about setting up a new (to me) greenhouse, but thanks to the fact that it’s barely been possible to stand up outdoors for the last couple of months (unless it’s only possible to stand up because I’m thigh-deep in mud), the project has been on hold for a while.
Now the weather is looking a little better it’s time to get back into things. The first step today was to level the ground and lay the recycled railway sleepers I intend to use as a base. The greenhouse is ten feet square (not three metres — it’s an old greenhouse 🙂 and the sleepers are nominally 8’6″ long, but it worked out quite neatly that four full sleepers and one more chainsawed into quarters was just the right size.
Before calling it a day, I grabbed a load of cardboard that I’ve been saving from our deliveries for months and spread it over the ground to act as a mulch. Obviously there’s nothing growing in the space at the moment, but the amount of disturbed soil is sure to have brought lots of weed seeds to the surface and I don’t want them having an easy time once I’m growing things, so I thought it worthwhile. I gave the cardboard a bit of a soak with a few watering cans of water to help stop it getting blown around overnight.