My latest project for wife

[John T Smith]

Wife and I are doing a new thing... growing vegetables in the winter... one more wheelbarrow load and the planter box will be full and ready for seeds
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I include me in this because...
A - I enclosed the open area to make an enclosed greenhouse
B - I built the planter box (inside is 91 x 20 x 10 inch filled depth)
C - I mounted the 2 LED grow lights to roof rafters and a 3-prong timer
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The larger grow light at the far end is from https://www.spider-farmer.com/ the smaller one is from a company no longer listed on Amazon (light still works OK, but if it ever dies I will buy Spider-Farmer)
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Both lights have locking pulleys to raise/lower the lights as needed (as the plants grow)
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Wife did a LOT of reading to pick what to grow, and she now has seeds on order

[Chuck Uebele]

Very nice! Our HOA doesn't even allow vegetable gardens! I used a have a little garden, when I lived in Los Angeles. Too a fair amount of work. I had another little one, when I moved to the central coast. I could never seem to get a mandarin orange to grow well there, which was one of my favorites, in LA. Now I don't even try in, NC. Although I am thinking of taking out some shrubs that I don't like and planting blueberries. 

[John T Smith]

>Our HOA doesn't even allow vegetable gardens! 

Hmm... the rules are made by vote of the members... so are there enough members who want such to change the rules?

Or is this an HOA like I've read about that will retaliate against anyone who tries to change things?

No HOA where we live, so the only rules are City/State rules about the river shoreline that the 31 owners share

[Chuck Uebele]

The rules are voted in my the homeowners. We have a HOA "Police" in our cul-de-sac, and we got a violation the first 2 weeks that we were there, for putting a birdbath in our front yard - even though the president and another board member have them in their front yards - see photo. Our neighbor across the street got into it with her, as he wanted to put up a full sized totem pole, in his back yard that his 95 year old uncle carved. He did manage to get approval, but the ARC said that he could only place it in two locations - both of which were right in front of his windows. He didn't listen to them ans placed it where he wanted - see photo. Our neighbor also got gigged for having a retractable screen door. Well he got fed up with them and got on the board. We can now have birdbaths, in the front yard and retractble screen doors. He wants me to get on the board, as well.

[John T Smith]

Wife has planted 1st set of seeds (will plant more over time to have continuing crop) and the 2 LED grow lights are plugged in (I did a search and found MANY references to seeds needing sunlight to germinate... lots of cloudy here lately so grow lights are taking place of sunlight)

[John T Smith]

The big leaf plants are radishes... the small ones along the back and on the left end with two narrow leaves are carrots... I'm thinking that after what we spent to build the greenhouse and planter box and on the two grow lights they will cost about as much as I spend on everything at the grocery store in a month or two... but wife is happy/busy and has not come up with a new project in the last month

[Chuck Uebele]

Better at home knowing there aren't chemicals on things. Looks great.

[PaintedKitty]

Oh wonderful! At one time we had a nice reasonably large garden and green house.  I even grew a few small banana trees in a few pots. I used half of the green house as an outdoor studio. Came in handy when doing year round airbrushing since you need a decent place for ventilation. These days in our current property, we have this dinky garden. I call it the shoe box garden.  We also have a dinky greenhouse. 😁 So in the basement I have my makeshift studio. I can only do airbrushing some times of the year for ventilation reasons.  ☹️ None the less we do have a couple of nice citrus trees. Last year we had a bumper crop of lemons on the smaller tree. They had some qualities of the larger and older orange tree.  😊

These days any large potted plants are stored in our garage.