A Hanging Greenhouse Bench

Now that I'm settled in down south, it's time to plant my winter garden. This is a Mediterranean climate which means there is a wet and then a dry season. So far, there hasn't been appreciable rain since May and so all the native vegetation is in it's dormant Summer state.

Most people here were raised in a different climate and have water systems that bring river water from hundreds of miles away. They plant in the spring and then water all summer long until the fall and then wait it out until Spring again before another round of planting. While this works, it's upside down. The natural cycle in this desert climate is to plant in the fall just before the rainy season and then harvest in the spring, letting the garden lie dormant through the drought of Summer.

I'm on a well--a fossil water well--as are all my neighbors. What that means is that any water I suck from the ground takes hundreds of years to naturally replenish. The local water table has dropped a couple hundred feet in the last 20 years due to misuse. Therefore I collect rainwater whenever I can and try to use the ground water sparingly and wisely.

Since it is the end of the dry season and most native plants have either died back or lie dormant, there isn't much for the "little people," (the local animals and insects) to eat. Anything sprouting is fair game for them. Right now, earwigs are especially ravenous and a seedling doesn't stand much of a chance once it has emerged. That's why I devised this hanging greenhouse bench.

Until the rains bring on a flush of other vegetation, I can't plant directly into any garden bed. I need to sprout seedlings in containers and then put them out when they are large enough to withstand a bit of nibbling.

It's a simple set up. Take a wide board or piece of plywood, drill a hole in each corner and slip a piece of rope through. Tie simple knots in each end to prevent slipping back through the holes and you're almost done. I have a nice aluminum cross bar in the roof of the greenhouse that I can hang the bench from. I use special knots that I'll probably post about at some point, but for now, a double granny knot works too. Hang the bench at a convenient height, get it as level as you can and you're done. balance your seedling pots on the bench and that's it.

This works because any crawling insects, mice, voles, rabbits or whatever would have to scale the inside of the greenhouse and then crawl down the ropes to get to the seedlings. It's not completely foolproof, but it's the best solution for this particular problem. I do this even in the north since mice can be quite hungry at the end of winter and the greenhouse is the warmest at it's apex so the seeds sprout sooner. Try it yourself. It really works.