Belarusian spring

[Andrey_BY]

As I said before we are having very warm spring right from March 1.

We've never visit our dacha (60 km from Minsk where we are living) so early for all the time we have been owning this dacha.

But there was one huge snowfall here in February and we forgot to take out a snow from the roots of our greenhouses and here was what we had after this lazy mistake. The roof had been pushed 1 m down to the ground.



Everything had been repaired during last week-end and 40 our tomato seedlings will get a home in May as planned

Two other greenhouses survived well.





Now we have +15 C during the whole day and even roses are waking up.



Here we have some radishes sown under simple cover.



Garlics are feeling good.



Spring is here with no chances for winter to come back

A week ago our pincher Danya gave us three F1 babies (black with some white, white with some brown and yellow/brown as she looks like). Banana box is full of dogs



I bet you've never seen such a modern church in USA, Canada or Australia. Monks made it from an old railway wagon and even grow some vegetables in the backyeard in this greenhouse It is an Orthodox church here in Minsk.

[shelleybean]

The little mama looks like a puppy herself! Adorable!

[Andrey_BY]

She is less than 2 y.o. People and animals become parents much earlier here than in Western countries

[spyfferoni]

That church is interesting. We have a restaurant in my town made out of an old trolley car, but no---I've never seen a church like that!

Tyff

[celestina]

We have an old railroad car that serves as a tourist information office in my town, and I've seen many diners in old RR cars--but have never seen an onion dome on an old RR car --nice image!

[Worth1]

Andrey I just love your Posts and Photos And am so glad to have met you here in TomatoVille.

Worth

[Tania]

wow - Andrey - I've never seen a church like that, it is amazing 8)
Thank you for sharing pictures.

Your littly doggies and their Mom are adorable!

[ddsack]

Andrey,

It is so interesting to see where you do your gardening. I am especially interested in the photo of your wooden frame for the empty greenhouse, I think the 3rd picture. Are the major heavy vertical support posts actually sunk into the ground, or just held up by the rest of the frame? I assume this will be covered with plastic?

I built a similar (but smaller) greenhouse years ago -- I had no carpentry skills or proper tools or plans, just nailed what fit! My major booboo was sinking my corner support posts in the ground (like we do here for what we call a pole building.) It worked fine for a few years, but gradually over time, the frost heaves every winter acted like tectonic plates, moving different sides of my greenhouse in different directions! It is now dangerously tilting and I need to tear it down and rebuild it with a better plan.

[michael johnson]

My only wish is that someone would invent some realy good polythene sheeting for covering greenhouses with that had a crossword puzzle type of nylon thread woven into it, so that it would not tear in big rips when the wind and storm gets to it, I spent days outside with repair tape, repairing all the holes and rips and get real fed up with it,

[Andrey_BY]

Originally Posted by ddsack

Andrey,

It is so interesting to see where you do your gardening. I am especially interested in the photo of your wooden frame for the empty greenhouse, I think the 3rd picture. Are the major heavy vertical support posts actually sunk into the ground, or just held up by the rest of the frame? I assume this will be covered with plastic?

Dee, these thick vertical wooden sticks are just held up by the whole heavy construction. It's better to do like this to have a chance to move this wooden frame every 3-4 years on a different place with different soil and plants grown before.
We cover this frame (anyway call it a greenhouse here ) with transparent PVC cover - new every year. That's what most of our people do because glass is quite expensive.
This is our greenhouse (frame) for sweet peppers.

Thanks for all warm comments. This church is very interesting indeed. They've got no help from the goverment or Lukashenko so they had to be very creative to spend not so much to build they church.

[garnetmoth]

Andrey- Neat pictures!
I see a blue barrel, do you have rainwater barrles for your garden irrigation?

Very cool church.

Michael- someone else posted this a TVILLE recently: http://www.robertmarvel.com/Greenhousecover.html

I dont know if you can get ahold of any, but it sounds exactly like what you want.

Have a good weekend!

[Spatzbear]

Thanks for all the pictures! I love travelling the world like that. Especially gardens. Great to see everybody's garden and way of doing things.

Hope you'll have a great season!
(Oh, and please continue sending pictures like this.)

[Patrina_Pepperina]

Yes, I really enjoyed your pics too Andrey! I would like to see some more pics as the season progresses so we can compare them back to when there was almost nothing there

PP

[michael johnson]

Thanks-Garnetmoth, that exactly what I was looking for, but it is probably impossible for me to get any living in the Uk, but it looks wonderfull stuff-ideal for the job.

Bit on the pricy side though.

Now if Andrey had a few dozen metres of that stuff- he could cover half his garden with it and then some, with virtualy no repairs to do.

[amideutch]

Andrey, very nice and yes I think spring is upon us here in europe. Might have a few nights where the temp drops to 0 celcius but a mild winter we have had. Keep the pictures commin. Now I have to steal my daughters camera and take some pictures. Ami