Adventures in Repurposing

While we are on the topic of green living with our Earth Days month, I wanted to share with you some fun ideas for the home and garden. Here in Oregon, we have mild seasons so getting the jump on summer with a green house is a great way to extend the growing season for veggies and flowers. I love my little veggie garden and around this time of year I am chomping at the bit to get out there and plant. The down side is that we still have danger of a light frost until May. So my project I want to share with you today is building a tiny, re-purposed  and attractive greenhouse. This mini green house is made from 6 old windows that we bought at an estate auction but can also be found at recycled home building supply stores like Habitat for Humanity's Restore.

We used four windows that are the same size and two that are a bit skinnier for the roof.

Here is Matt lining the up to be perfectly square. I grew impatient with his attention to detail but in the end it was appreciated because the 4th window we added to the base was the door and it swings closed easily on it's hinges. We added a small latch with a simple hook and loop.

Here is the finished project. You can see the the roof is still open, which is fine for ventilation in our area which is plant hardiness zone 8. If you are in a harsher zone, a bit of clear plastic stretched over these triagle shaped gaps would be great. Find your zone here 

I planted these spinach and basil seeds 3 weeks ago, which is very early for basil here. They are happy and growing is their little glass house!

Some things to watch for when using old windows is often the paint can flake off and contaminate edible plants. I scraped off the inside of these windows and continue to keep on eye on the surface as moisture and temp created more peeling. I haven't had a problem with it but use common sense, which I know you will.

More fun ideas for re-purposing items this spring can be found on Pinterest.com but here are some of my favorites and hopefully, soon to be in my house!