Four: The First Greenhouse Is Built
My buddy Stu and his wife had moved to Denver so he couldn’t help me build my first greenhouse. I asked another dear friend to help. Kirk worked construction during the week and came to my place on the weekends. Essentially, we were erecting what is commonly called a hoop house or quanset hut shaped greenhouse. Everything was metal except the end frames. Stuppy was the greenhouse manufacturer, a brand many of my California growers used. Once the Stuppy engineers had the greenhouse dimensions, 20’x80,’ they calculated all the necessary posts, purlins (horizontal pipe), bows (curved pipe), nuts, bolts and rivets. Construction was underway by January.
The winter of 1978-79 was bitter cold. Our fingers froze to the pipe. The daytime temperatures rarely rose above freezing and every night, it plunged well below.
Kirk and I bundled in thick parkas and mittens, cited the corners and ran a string-line to mark the location of twenty-eight post holes, ten on each side and four on each end, all four feet deep. The ground was frozen solid.
On weekdays, while Kirk was somewhere in the valley building apartments or some such, I dug post holes. My tools were a pair of gloves, a shovel, a posthole digger, a digging bar, a Bic lighter and several bags of charcoal briquets. Lighting small beds of briquets, I thawed the ground 6” or 7” deep, removed the roasted soil and put the briquets back in the hole. Inch by inch, foot by foot, the post holes were unearthed.
In the meantime, the greenhouse parts arrived on a flatbed from Kansas. I organized everything in the yard. Nothing was too heavy but boy, what a lot ofpieces.
On January 31, the temperature was -eight. By mid-February, it was still freezing at night, but the daytime temperature soared to 35 or 40. Sakrete, a ready-mix concrete, shouldn’t be poured when the temperature is below 50 but, we had to do it. We couldn’t move forward until the posts were cemented in the ground. Kirk knew some tricks for pouring sakrete in frigid temperatures and, we used them all except the first one that says ‘never do it.’ We used hot water and
lots of straw for blanketing. We lay on our bellies and blew on it, prayed on it, waved our arms and yelled at it. Somehow it worked.
Try as one might, it’s impossible to handle a screw gun or a ratchet while wearing mittens, but frozen fingers aside, purlin upon post, bow upon purlin, screw after bolt, a greenhouse was taking shape. Kirk, looked at me one morning with a big grin on his face and an icicle hanging from the tip of his nose, rubbed his mittens together and said,
“What problem are we going to solve today?”
It was time to install the Modine hanging heater which weighed almost 200 lbs. The instructions recommended renting a cherry picker or scaffolding to reach the 14’ peak. Rental fees were not in the budget but, we did have rope. We jury-rigged a pulley system to hoist the heater. We stood on back-to-back ladders and heaved on the rope until the heater was high enough for me to connect it to the short chains we had previously attached to a bow. Our original plan called for me to stand on Kirk’s shoulders while I connected the chains, but Kirk worried that while he was holding the 200 lb. heater in his arms and I was standing on his shoulders, he might start laughing or crying. Either way, we’d all fall down.
Finally, the day came to put on the polyethylene or plastic roof. This may sound simpley but the roof must be put on with special care. It’s all too easy to snag the plastic on a bolt and tear a hole in it. If it’s not put on straight, it bunches when it’s clamped down. It’s more than just a cover. It provides critical insulation and when properly tinted, protection against sunburn. The roof is actually two layers of plastic. Once both layers are clamped on, a small hole is cut in the inside layer and a blower fan installed. The fan blows air between the layers and creates a 6” ‘dead air’ space which acts as insulation. The roof is strong enough to hold a heavy snow load which provides further insulation and can handle eighty mile-an-hour wind whip.
We began by rolling the first sheet alongside the greenhouse. Wadding up 2 adjacent corners, we cinched them with rope. We wadded up the middle of the edge and tied rope around that, too. Then we catapulted the loose end of the ropes over the metal frame. On the other side, we tugged the rope, hauling the plastic up and over the peak and down to the sidewall. The poly was heavy and difficult to get straight or square on both sides. If it’s not straight, it puckers as you clamp it down. We rolled out the second sheet, figuring it would be much easier to haul over the slick, first layer. We were wadding up the corners to tie on the rope when a gust of wind came out of nowhere. It picked up my end of the plastic
like the mainsail of a yacht. In a second, I was 15’ in the air and still rising. Through the whirr of the wind, I heard Kirk yelling, “Let go. Let go.”
Despite the bumps and bruises, we finally got the roof on. It was a giant magnifying glass. Before any plants could go in, it had to be shaded, i.e. sprayed with greenhouse paint. To do this, I used a trombone sprayer. It’s kind of a trick of the eye. It literally looks like a trombone. The slide acts as a pump and has a ¼” tube that hangs into a five gal. bucket of white greenhouse paint. Standing as high as I could on the tallest ladder I could find, I aimed for the peak of the roof and pumped the slide. The paint was sucked up the tube and sprayed out the trumpet in the form of a splatter. Since the poly was slick, the paint ran off in long drips. The trombone clogged. The tube popped out of the bucket. A breeze came up and blew paint in my face and in my neighbors swimming pool. I imagine a trombone sprayer and the greenhouse paint in a horticultural museum today or in a museum of things that are an embarrassment to ideas. Despite my best efforts I never did get the dang thing to work right!
By the middle of March, the greenhouse was ‘buttoned up.’ There was still plenty to do but, the building was finished. Outside temperatures were in the 50’s and sunset was late – 7:00 p.m! The ground outside was nothing but mud. Surprisingly, mud can be a sure reason for hope.
Inside the greenhouse, it was warm and dry. When the sun was low in the west and shining through the fiberglass, I liked to sit on the wood framing at the back end. For just a few minutes, everything glowed a brilliant pink and gold. I’d ask myself, “is this a dream or am I waking from a nightmare?” What will the real world bring?