Ever wondered what the difference is between a greenhouse and a glasshouse? . Ever been presented with a shade house and wondered what the hell you do with it aside from growing ferns, bromeliads and passionvine hopper eggs?? Hey, same! You can go here for more detailed explanations on the differences but quick synapses is that a greenhouse is a shade-house, a hot-house is a glasshouse..
Last year we had a glasshouse on our property, it was great, really handy. But it did come with its own set of problems, one of which was the plants frazzling with the intense heat and drying out super fast, then there’s the maintenance and if you get any sort of pest insect in there they tend to set up home and stubbornly not leave!
Glass House Love
On this property we have a rustic wooden shade house. As I was cleaning it up I got the impression that it had been especially lovingly built by somebody. And that it hadn’t been appreciated in a long time except by the ivy, jasmine and passion vine hoppers!
Our rustic shade house
Passion vine hoppers are the adult forms of those cute little springy fluffybums, there’s some photos here of them, and this is their eggs…
Passion vine hopper eggs
When you have an invasion of these suckers (literally, they are the sucking variety) it’s nigh impossible to get rid of them as they just flick flick away. Sooo, a little bit pedantically I go round all wooden surfaces with a knife and scrape their eggs away or cut any dead vines and twigs that have them on them and burn ’em up. As you can see from the photo they just look like little tufts of woody fibre. I’m never going to get them all but I know I’m decreasing their numbers at least some what.
Now these cocoons/eggs on the other hand are ones to nurture…
Prey Mantis cocoon
Little baby Prey Mantis come out of these and Prey Mantis are the good guys whom eat the bad guys, aka ninja predatory insect. Fast enough for fluffybums? I don’t know but we can only hope!
Aaanyway, this was supposed to be about what to do with my shade house… it’s actually almost quite perfect for me, I can put my fresh cuttings in there so they don’t freak out with that sun that’s nicely warming up, I can use it to harden up my seedlings and it stores my pots and mediums quite fine. I suspect that if this summer gets as hot as it did last year I’ll be using it to transfer some heat tender plants.
err, I could’ve tidied it up before taking the photo!
Still, I could do with a glasshouse too, I think I’m going to have some space issues with the amount of plants I’m growing this year!
I’ll be updating the website very soon with the herbs and tomato varieties I’ll be growing for sale this year, stay tuned!!
We really want to grow celeriac this year. Wondering if you might be planting some cos then we could buy them from you instead of making time to sow them ourselves!
Hey Madz, Have to admit that celeriac isn’t on our family menu so I don’t grow it, sorry! Maybe you can sway me by making me something super delicious with it in it…. te-he!