New Dome Action

Spring is finally here! And I hope that I can get enough time to get what I need to get done with the dome before Fall hits again! I swear, I've had this recurring dream where alluvasudden it's Autumn again and it dawns on me that we haven't gotten the greenhouse ready for cooler weather and we barely even planted for Summer!

So, the thought has been turning in my mind about how best to cover the dome. If I we're to build another dome, I will do it with 2x4 boards with maybe PVC connectors. This would have given me an easy surface to attach paneling to, but instead I built this dome out of electrical conduit .. pipe. How do you attach flat paneling to a round surface like conduit?

The answer is above. Or, one of the answers is above. Perhaps the wrong answer is above .. that is the wonder of science and of trial and error. I think it's going to work out, though.

Each conduit strut on the dome will have one of these mounted on it. The channel on the bottom is where the conduit will fit into. The other side provides a surface to mount the paneling on. Each end of one of these boards is cut with 36, 30, or 27 degree angles depending on which conduit strut it is covering. The top surface is planed along the center at 10 degrees. Additionally, each tips' angles are also cut with the table saw blade at 10 degrees.

Here, we can see the dome with a good number of these boards mounted.

A view of the mounted boards from inside.

Your's truly, setting up to cut a triangular panel to be attached to the top of the mounted boards.

Me again, up on the ladder fastening a panel to the mounted boards.

There is a little slop in this process. Like Dad is fond of saying, we're not building a clock. But, there is some precision that must be put in place to at least get a feel for what the general tolerance of the structure is.

To cut 15 of these boards it takes me a little over 4 hours. Probably another 4 to 8 hours to get them up there, paneled and sealed. At this rate .. I figure I should be done-done by mid Summer.

A friend of mine asked about the material that I am using to do the paneling. It is called Solexx and it is truly magical material! Here is one roll. The other is still sitting in the front of my house so as to keep the neighbors and passers-by continually confused and perplexed.

More to come ...

Racoon tracks!

Croicky! It's 2 AM and it looks like raccoons have been here! Two raccoon named Katie and Greg to be precise. An impromtu muchies jam yielded a baked casserole-type dip consisting of spinach, artichoke hearts, Parmesan cheese, garlic, lemon and mayonaise. Mmm Mmm .. Just like how mom used cook .. When she was crocked at 2 AM!

Labor Day Deck Building

Last weekend I managed to get the general support frame together for the back patio / deck. Not much else happened over the course of the week.




Progress over Labor Day weekend. Tedious work!


We got a double rainbow in the usual location! I didn't get the camera quick enough and it began to fade.





We decided to widen the top platform and extend the stairs as out fully, which should give a cool complimentary angle to the look of it.





This is Leo. Er, no, I mean say hello to Leona. She is a girl it turns out. She is also a stray that wandered into our yard. We suspect, given her tame nature, that she was abandon here at our place. Seeing the play-set and kid paraphernalia littering the yard, they must have known that we would find it difficult to simply get rid of her. She was going to be our 'out-doors kitty' but .. we are having a change of heart. She may turn into our 'inside kitty' instead! Or both perhaps.


Stairs are on!




All that is left to do here is to finish the top platform, the last few deck boards leading up to the stairs, and put some sort of face boarding on the top and on the bottom of the stairs to pretty it up.

So far we're talking something like ... $1,200 in building material ... 60 some hours of labor ... about 2 cases of beer ... hmm!

More crazy 'maters - new deck!

Alas, the summer is winding down and we are scrambling like mad to freeze, can, jar dehydrate or use all of the vegetables that have been popping up. We always seem to bite off more than we can chew, so there is always some amount of loss .. be it cucumbers that turn into Louisville Sluggers, peppers that rot on the vine, etc. For the most part, though, we have been on top of it and have been socking away many jars of tomatoes and pickles and have been making our 'summer soup' consistently for a month now.

You recall the mammoth tomatoes in the grow dome from the last post. This is what we are talking about now - tomato plants overflowing from the windows!

The back yard still looks a bit like a demilitarized zone. Slowly, we have been moving the various piles of dirt to places in the front yard that need it. Grass seed to follow.

Katie has spent a lot of time pruning the plants on the inside of the grow dome. You can see the hollowed out section that she pruned through. This way, she can literally walk inside and pick the tomatoes from the inside of the mess!


This house supplies us with an never ending stream of projects. A while ago we cut out the old patio deck, which was in the final stages of sublimating into a vapor state. The last straw was when Aiden went through a rotten deck board up to his hip. Now, we are finally getting around to putting a new patio deck in. Last week - every day after work - I dug post holes and prepared posts. This Saturday and Sunday I put in full 8 hour days in the hot sun getting the basic structure in place. This shot is from Saturday morning - the posts awaiting the support structure to come.

A lot of preparation went into just getting to this point. Aside from simply needing a deck, there are issues with rain water flowage. This meant grading ground beneath the deck to shunt moisture away, putting down plastic and bringing in gravel. Once the deck is complete I will put in large gutters and down spouts which will carry the water under the deck and down hill away from the house.

As the afternoon progressed, I was able to discover where my level line would be and begun hanging 2"x6" joists.


By the end of the day Sunday we had a plan for how to arrange the deck boards. It's actually starting to look like something! When we are through, we will probably rebuild the stairs and use that space more fully - what is there currently was just a temporary solution. We'll hide some of the ugly under stuff with some lattice, too.

Big-booty tomatoes!

Hmm.  I'll repost a few of these pictures, as some do not have links to the larger version ..

I've been promising my friends that I would post some a picture or two of the tomato plants that I have been ranting on and on about.  Finally, I make good on the promise.  Taken from the tire wall just on the other side of the grapes, this panoramic shot attempts to give you some idea of scale of what is happening in the green house.  BIG growth on tomato and pepper plants alike.  The basil and other herbs seem to be enjoying themselves as well.  I know I can't wait to enjoy them!

Lillian was excited to take a picture of use standing next to the tallest.  She took a good shot, but you still can't see just how far the tomato reaches toward the sky.  There have been a few nights now where I have been derailed from whatever I was in the middle of (finishing the outside of the green house) and made to scale the inside of the dome in order to string these huge tomato plants up.  Now THAT would have been a photo, except that my cursing would not have been captured fully .. 

Getting some red ones, now.  Pretty soon we'll be up to our eyeballs in tomatoes, which we will do our best to consume, jar, freeze and dehydrate.  We just used up the last bag of frozen tomatoes from last year in my (in)famous black beans and wild rice recipe.

Hop to it!  This is a tower that I built for growing hops.  They are getting a slow start, as I had a delay in getting them in the ground.  With so much to do, I had to fight with myself to make the time needed to assemble and plant the tower.

Hops growing up one of the wires.  I may not get many buds this year, but next year I'll have established vines that ought to produce a healthy amount of hops buds.

A shot of the back garden from underneath the huge mulberry tree, from which we harvested quite a few berries.  It's a little messy with weeds, but the tomato, pepper, eggplant and herb plants are doing pretty well.  Well .. the tomato plants out there are getting blight on them, but we ought to be able to pull off many good tomatoes from the looks of it.

Advice for stringing up 'maters: metal fence posts.  The kind with little notches.  Makes stringing up 'maters very simple.  Simple is good.  So are 'maters.

In front of the garage / chicken coop we have expanded the garden.  Katie's "lasagna garden" worked beautifully last year and we expanded from that.  Out there be bush and pole beans, onions, asparagus, black eyed peas, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, a few apple trees, pear trees and currant bushes.

Strange strange skies

A week or so ago, we residents of south central Wisconsin we're treated to some very unusual skies.  After the torrential rains, we received a beautiful double rainbow.  I was in the shower at the time and my wife was yelling like a mad-woman for me to come and look, so I hurried out, shivering in a towel, to go stand on the roof and take a panoramic shot.

As the sun crept over the hill to the west, the colors turned into the deepest orange I think I've ever seen.  It certainly was very strange, very beautiful.  

One of the really weird things was the persistence of the rainbow even as the sun got dimmer and dimmer.  There wasn't enough light to really capture the unusual quality of the sky, but here is one that attempts to do so.  And no, those are not orbs from the spirit realm, unfortunately .. only raindrops that got caught when the flash went off.  :)  

Midnight Farmer

As some of you may know, my lovely wife has taken to working in the green house at night.  It is a peaceful place to have a glass of wine and work on the garden.  At night, the dome looks a little unearthly, illuminating the yard and casting shadows from within, where tomato plants reach for the sky.

Inside the doorway, the view is reminiscent of someone's living room!  The hanging wicker lamp came with the house (with tons of other crap!) ten years previous, which along with the wooden flower beds gives a certain homey-ness to the place.  It's a homey-spaceship-looking thing!  :)

Propagating strawberries.  We are multiplying the number of strawberries, setting up our shots for next year.