Help with overgrown greenhouse.

A question about : Help with overgrown greenhouse.

I moved into a new house in November and i'm finally looking at getting the garden sorted. I'd like to sew some vegetable seeds next month. I've put some pictures up, any advice on what to do or where to start with the greenhouse and what I assume used to be a vegetable patch.

The previous owner said her husband was the gardener but he had an accident and has been in a nursing home for the past 4 years, so I don't think anything has been done since then.

Thank you.

Best answers:

• Clear absolutely everything out of the greenhouse and dispose of it.
  Clean and disinfect it inside.
  Then do what you want with the space.
  The veg patch looks ok. Clear off the leaves remove any weeds, mulch the soil and away you go.
• Remove all the old weeds etc out of the greenhouse and the patch of 'soil', so you can see what you have.
  Clean the green house, I used hot soap water when mine was over grown like that, inside and out side.
  Then you can work out what size ara you have and what you want to grow.
  Good luck
• Thank you. I just went to homebase for some heavy duty gloves, a wheelbarrow and Jeys Fluid (which my Mom recommended). Going to rip it all up and give it a good scrub on Saturday.
• You have a good supply of willow herb there by the looks of it (the white fluffy stuff in the greenhouse).
  Try and get the seedheads into plastic bags and dispose of safely, then learn what they look like at seedling stage.
• When you weed the greenhouse be careful not to stick your spade/fork or any part of you through the glass. When you use the jeyes fluid dilute it with tap water you don't need much to a litre of water, I generally wash mine down with diluted jeyes fluid and a scrubbing brush if needed, spray it off with a little water and wipe the glass clean with wet wipes, carefully drying it with kitchen roll.
• It leaves mine all smeary so I go the whole hog and even do the outside too.
• May pay you to get a Hippo Bag to save many trips to the skip
• If this is your first greenhouse (it may not be of course) you are in for years of delight, once you have cleared it out.
  A few years ago, a friend helped me put the sides together and the roof structure up and then I painstakingly moved one pane at a time from my garage to the greenhouse andclipped each one in place, my heart soaring as the construction came together. I was given 8' wooden benching for my birthday and I was away.
  Now I can happily sit outside on sunny days in winter as the green house approaches 60 degrees farenheit. I listen to plays on iPlayer, watch the birds coming to my feeders and admire the display of cyclamen. I daydream about summer, when the greenhouse will be full of cukes and toms and chillis and herbs and all sorts. I grow strawberries inside to get good early crops (as well as outside).
  Outside, in raised beds, I grow asparagus, beans, chives, salads, peas, alpine strawberries. I am trying to grow soft fruit but having difficulty - must test the soil in that bed.
  You are in for such a treat with your greenhouse!
• You have a nice compost tray there...
• Hello All, thought i'd put a little update on here for you. Spent all day saturday working on the greenhouse. Very pleased with the results, ready for sowing some seeds as soon as the staging comes.
• Looks great.
  I would be very tempted to encourage the weed seeds to grow now and keep hoeing them out at this stage in the year; should be warm enough to get most of them going.
• I am putting a supposedly 'weed proof' sheet over the soil and then covering that with gravel. I'm not going to be growing anything directly in the ground. If any weeds still come up, I'll spray weed killer on them. Hopefully that will be enough.
• I like your dog - i used to have a Cavalier King Charles spaniel years ago.! I know nothing about greenhouses, other than a stray cat sleeps in my mams!!
• For the first year or two, I'd grow tomatoes/cuces/aubs/peppers in buckets, just to see what weeds are still dormant in the soil.
  In fact, if truth be known, I'd probably pave the whole lot. Growing in buckets enables you to put fresh soil in every year.
  In a colder greenhouse, I would bury the buckets (with a drainage well underneath, padded out by old polystyrene packaging or similar), so the warmth gets into the roots from the ground, but still gives me the chance to put fresh soil/manure for each plant, and less chance of picking up nasties.