First heavy snow of the season

The weather men were all excited as the forecast of a snow storm blared from the TV, radio and Internet. You would have thought that we had never seen snow before. Shoot I can remember Decembers when we got over 100 inches of snow. When we were kids there was always plenty of snow. And nobody had snow-blowers. My parents shoveled the snow by hand.

But every winter we endure the first heavy snow of the season just like we have been doing for many years.

I can remember one winter they were shoveling out the drive and we were on a snow bank looking down on the top of the car.
Anyway I digress. I really like blowing snow so today we went out and did everything including around the greenhouse. I really don’t know if it is important but I like to keep the snow off the plastic if I can.

It really shows the insulating properties of the double layer plastic when there can be snow and ice on the top and its 75 comfortable degrees inside.

We have gravel beds around the outside of the greenhouse where the summer plant racks sit. This way we do not need to worry about trimming weeds under the plant benches. We made them by securing 1 inch by 4 inch larch boards in the ground using 2 foot lengths of 1/2 inch conduit. The board are parallel to the sides of the greenhouse and 3 feet out. Then we put landscape fabric down and then pea gravel on top of that. It is the same 1/2 inch gravel that serves as the floor of the greenhouse.

The original design was to make the benches just wide enough to cover the gravel so the snow blower wold not pick it up when going around the outside. Unfortunately there is not enough room for the snow blower to keep a safe distance from the plastic. If we were to contact the wiggle wire the snow blower could rip the plastic and I don’t even want to think about changing it in the winter. I am not sure the mending tape would work either.

At any rate we plowed a nice wide path to the greenhouse and a 4 foot swath all around. After all its winter and we never know when we will get a real snow storm.