Weeks 5 and 6: In Repair

After the depressing news of the collapsed roof, the Dirt Bag Brigade built a new, sturdier roof. Alyssa and I spent last Saturday building a roof (attempting to build a roof, really.) Our plan was to build the roof with making 2 squares of 8 foot 2 by 4's. Somehow, even with measurements, we over-estimated the size of the greenhouse. We finished with only making one square which was placed on the poles left over from the first roof.

Alyssa and I quickly realized that we are not carpenters. Even growing up in households with handy-men for fathers, we could not build sturdy squares, and the one we did build took over an hour. So we gave up and decided to head to the greenhouse on Sunday and use the cordless drill, which we thought for sure would be much easier. Well, it wasn't.

The screw-driver had old, stripped

bits and we are both pretty incompetent when it comes to drills (we had the drill on reverse for a good 10 minutes.) After some time we finished the second square. at this point we felt pretty defeated so we decided to wait for another student (Dan) to help us stretch the plastic.

Thursday morning the three of us; Alyssa, Dan, and I were ready to finish the roof. We had a set-back, our two squares fell apart over the previous 4 days. This may have been a blessing because Dan thought of a better idea, a sturdier idea. We built one square with one board through the center to keep it level and sturdy. Dan is much better at building things than Alyssa and I, thank god Dan was there. Then we stretched the plastic tight and nailed it in to the dirt bags. We also used a staple gun. It looked much better, much more taunt than before.

Now we are going to see how well it holds up, and with-in the next couple of weeks I will re-plant some buckets and see how those do. We are going to keep a digital thermometer in the greenhouse to record the temperature so we have some data from the project.

Week 3 and 4: Uh-Oh

Well, a lot has happened to our little experiment since my last post.

Saginaw had some terrible weather last week (winds up to 40-50mph) and our dirt bag walls did a great job withstanding it, however, our plastic cover (or roof) didn't do too well.

It seems that, like we expected, the plastic sheeting pooled a lot of rainwater and the weight of the water was too much. The roof fell in along with a half-dozen dirt bags that were holding the plastic roof down. It is unclear at what time this happened, we do know it happened on the weekend after I had watered the buckets which were doing excellent at the time. The next week, a greenhouse employee informed us of the problem.

I took a look at the greenhouse expecting it to be collapsed (as the e-mail made it sound so) but was surprised at the little damage I saw especially with the high winds the area was facing. It was mostly daunting because the greenhouse was filled with water but I was impressed that our walls didn't collapse.

So, the greenhouse is still intact but the global bucket study will no longer continue. The buckets were subjected to the elements including the freezing temperatures during the time the plastic fell-in and that will have an ill-effect on the study.

However, with the enduring spirit of the Dirtbag Brigade, the roof will be replaced! We are going to build a roof using 2*4's. We will stretch the extra plastic sheeting over the wood and use scrap wood to nail the plastic in place. In case there are more attacks by mother nature we will keep the roof secure by lining dirt bags on the edges. Hopefully this new design will keep rain water from pooling as the plastic will be stretched tight.

Once the roof is built, I will re-plant some of the buckets and continue to study plant growth inside the greenhouse during cooler temperatures, mostly for kicks. However if there is a harvest, we will use the basil to make pesto sauce and sell it for an organization that I am the co-president of, Taking Education Abroad at SVSU.

I will continue to post about the new roof and the buckets throughout the semester. Stay tuned.

*Note I took the pictures after the pool of water in the greenhouse evaporated, so it looks better than it originally sounded, which is good*