My North Dakota Cistern-Fed, Solar-Heated Greenhouse

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I finished off the cistern with a floor (or roof, depending on how you look at it) of rough-cut, full-thickness 2 X 8 planks. As of this writing, the planks have been in place three years and show no signs of deterioration, even with all that water underneath. (The problem in my greenhouse-even in winter-has been excess dryness, not too much humidity.) As long as the boards stay dry, they should go another three years-or more-with no problem.

THE GREEN HOUSE

After completing the cistern, I began work on the greenhouse itself. First I measured out the conservatory's width (12 feet) and length (30 feet), then dug a trench a foot deep by a foot wide along this line and-using a modification of the type of form described by the Nearings in their book, Living the Good Life-laid up a rock wall from the bottom of the trench to an aboveground height of two feet. (I used rock for this wall simply because it's free for the hauling around here. You could just as easily substitute recycled cement blocks, cinder blocks, etc. )

If you plan to build a greenhouse similar to minebut you want to lay the rock up by hand, without a form—I recommend you lay one tier of the stone at a time. (That is, start at one end of the trench and work your way clear around to the other before beginning the next layer of rock.) Lay old barbed wire, scrap iron, etc., in the corners to tie them together. And remember that when you're using stone rather than cement blocks, your mortar can be somewhat weaker. Five or six parts sand to one part cement is plenty strong enough.

As for the "see-through" part of the greenhouse, half of my 30'-long conservatory consists of a Lord & Burnham pre-fabbed unit that I'd erected on the southeast side of my house some years before. (I moved this unit to its present location for reasons of increased heating efficiency.) I built the other half of the greenhouse from scratch using some recycled 4'X 6' windows (six panes of glass each) I got from an old house that was being torn down in town. These windows are supported on 2 X 4 framing at six-foot intervals.

The redwood benches in my greenhouse were constructed from a salvaged livestock watering tank. (These aren't hard to come by. At farm auctions, you'll often see a pile of lumber for sale containing the remains of cedar and/or redwood tanks. Of course, you should stick with either cedar or redwood, since other types of wood will rot out on you after three or four years.) For general use, a planter bench six inches deep will do fine. Otherwise-if you want to grow carrots or other deep-rooted crops-your benches will have to be 10" or 12" deep. And you don't have to build the planters from scratch: You can use old dresser drawers, pails, or just about anything that'll hold dirt.

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