Whew, we got the plastic on the hoop house frame right in time, a couple of hours in fact before the snowstorm blew in. We used 6 mil landscape plastic, which turned out more opaque than we thought it would: will it reflect and diffuse the sunlight too much? Well, it will have to do for now. We bought PVC clamps from a greenhouse store – it was the delay in the order that took us so long. All in all, this greenhouse cost us less than $300. The doorway still needs to be fixed.
I also got a lot of wild wood kindling in, in time before the snow covered it all up. Here is about a tenth of what we have, drying on the old soil screen in the shed. It’s good stuff, especially the long dead, already barkless wood that falls out of the trees on a windy day. These sticks dry out in no time, weigh very little, and they light like match sticks (very fat ones).
The last thing we provided for was food for the birds. I have the feeling that there were much less birds during this Fall migration than last year, though I must admit I spent much less time keeping an eye on our feeder. I’ve seen a couple of juncos, but for the rest it’s just us and the woodpeckers.
That’s not a bad price at all for a greenhouse. This may be a good staring point for us too. That is if I can figure out where to put one.