Now that the last of the spinach and lettuce under cloches have been used, here is my first Winter project post. Getting this page together helped me to finally figure out how to use this little greenhouse that lives on our deck. What I hope to use the greenhouse for: 1. We do have space to start some seeds indoors, but I don’t like taking up that space for easy to grow seeds like coleus, which need little care and 2. We have stopped purchasing spinach and lettuce from food stores due to plastic packaging and food practices. Greens, spinach and lettuce are super easy to grow year-round and take up little space. (They can also be grown indoors as microgreens and there are soil free systems available for this.) The greenhouse is conveniently located right outside the backdoor, so it is in an easy to access location, with electricity nearby. We grew a pot of spinach in it last year, with no heating pads, we planted the seeds in January but due to not getting enough sun, it never made it past baby spinach. We just moved the greenhouse to a sunnier location on the deck and now I am ready to clean it out and use it to get some seeds started. Hardening-off young plants in the Spring is a chore and it’s very disappointing to lose plants after so much work over the Winter so I’m hoping this goes as planned!

Included are some lettuce and spinach varieties that I found grow well in containers, had easy/good germination and were good for salads and sandwiches. All are great for ornamental use also.

I purchased heating pads for the shelves, the next steps are cleaning the greenhouse out and putting those in. Updates to come!