This morning marks the completion of a long-standing project here at the ranch. You may recall the construction of a greenhouse last year, one made of PVC and plastic sheeting. Well, now for the rest of the story: it was completed early in December of 2006 and blew away (yes, literally) while I was away on a ski trip in February. It was securely anchored to the ground, but the high straight winds we often get here at the ranch get the better of it, and it disintegrated right before my neighbor’s amazed eyes. I heard all about it when I got back from the trip.

This is take two. Sometime during the year, I got a catalog from Grower’s Supply. After pondering the various models (there are literally hundreds!), a commercial structure made of steel tubing, polycarbonate panel and multiple layers of dense plastic sheeting seemed the way to go. I settled on a 16 foot by 20 foot version, with an 8 foot maximum height. Quite a bit larger than the destroyed, home-built version. It arrived by truck on December 4th, and I began work the following weekend.

Initially, I imagined that a weekend or two of effort would result in a finished greenhouse, but the foundation alone (a dozen 2-foot, 1 5/8-inch steel pipes sunk into the caliche) took a whole weekend. The video above tells the rest of the story in pictures so you can see how the whole process went. Enjoy, but beware the file size (about 27 mBytes).