Welcome to my new blog. My plan here is to discuss anything related to plants, gardening, greenhouse growing and greenhouse building.
That seems to be the way my own life has progressed. I started out in Ag classes in school. Went on to be a barely passable machinist, then when I learned you can get really hungry while laid off from the machine shop I found the nursery business. After developing building running and selling 2 and a half nurseries I retired at 50 years old. That lasted 3 months. Three months into a 6 month lease in a downtown Seattle condo I had already found a 5 acre piece of property and started building a 20'x150' greenhouse. That turned into farmers markets. What a Godsend. I could talk to strangers and sell them stuff too. It seems that when you are loving what you are doing it rubs off on your customers.
After a few years at that property I started looking for a smaller place which means I needed smaller greenhouses. Guess what, they aren't any out there. At least any that are reasonably priced and strong enough to stand up to our extreme winds and occasional snow here in the Pacific Northwest.
I still needed a smaller house so I started experimenting with every kind of bender I could find in the local tool stores and off of the internet. After amassing several piles of scrap tubing I finally came up with my own hydraulic electric contraption that will bend bows with an amazing degree of repetition. I can now bend 24 bow halves and the 24th one is almost identical to the first one. Repeating is good but you also have to deal with the weld line inside of the tubing. Tubing has what's called 85 percent weld whereas pipe has 100 percent weld. Well I found out that that 15 percent of non weld will bite you in the ass every time. Unless you can locate that weld line in the same orientation your bow turns into half a pretzel.
Okay enough for today. If I have your interest come on back for more. I plan on trying to keep this blog current as much as I can in the winter. The spring is my time to work though so I may slack off some then. If you have any questions please ask. I don't have all the answers about the world of growing but am willing to help you find them.
By the way if you caught any spelling errors congratulations, you're my kind of person.
The purpose of this blog is to share my hard won successes as well as my mistakes in the greenhouse business over the last 25 years. I hope to help others that are looking to get into the greenhouse business on either the small or medium scale. From the farmers markets to the small retail nursery.
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