When we bought our acreage three and a half years ago, the greenhouse was already in the plans. Not as an afterthought. Not as a someday maybe. As an actual line item in the vision Remo had for this property from day one. We were standing in an empty field looking at a lot of potential and he was already talking about where the greenhouse would go.
Then came two and a half years of building our custom home. Then the RV garage. Then my separate building where I cook and shoot and run the blog side of things. And through all of it, the greenhouse waited. Remo waited. He did not complain about it, which if you know Remo tells you everything you need to know about how much this mattered to him.
We broke ground this spring and finished at the beginning of May. Three and a half years after the idea. Worth it.
A Little About the Acreage
We moved from Langdon, which is a small hamlet about half an hour from Calgary. Roughly 5000 people, quiet, fine. We thought we were leaving the city behind. Turns out we are actually closer to Calgary now than we were then, about 15 minutes closer, which is objectively funny given that it feels like we are in the middle of nowhere. Open fields in every direction. Actual horizon. The kind of quiet that takes a few weeks to stop feeling strange.
The build took two and a half years and I will be honest with you, it was stressful. Not because anyone was rushing us. This is our forever home and we knew exactly what we wanted. But forever home means every decision matters and there were a lot of decisions. Remo and I are generally two peas in a pod, we agree on most things, but when we didn’t, our builder saved us. She’s a woman and she was always on my side. Remo had no chance and he knew it. Happy wife happy life, he says. Smart man.
Moving in day was everything I imagined except for the dust. There was still sanding happening in the basement and I am severely allergic to dust, so the first few days were not exactly the soft landing I had pictured. But once that cleared, I stood in this house we had spent two and a half years building and thought, yes. This is exactly right.
We built a road that loops around the entire property and I walk it with the dogs several times a day. Ten thousand steps without touching my treadmill, at least in summer. The dogs are absolutely living their best lives. I am also living my best life but the dogs are louder about it.
The greenhouse feels like the final piece. Like the property has been slowly becoming what it was always supposed to be, and this was the last thing on the list.
The Greenhouse Tour
It is 10 by 20 feet, which sounds manageable until you are standing inside it. Then it feels like its own little climate. Its own little world. We keep the doors open during the day so it does not actually smell like a greenhouse in the hot humid tropical sense. It smells like fresh air and basil and earth and something green that I don’t have a better word for. It smells like things are growing, which I suppose is the point.
The structure is proper. Not a kit from the garden centre that folds in a strong wind. A real polycarbonate greenhouse on a wood frame base that can handle a Canadian season, and if you are not from here, a Canadian season means it needs to handle things that would make a greenhouse in a gentler climate very nervous.
Inside right now we have raised beds running the length of both sides with a gravel path down the middle. One side is the herb bed. Basil, dill, parsley, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and I believe more are coming. I have been told more are coming. The other side has the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, kale, and lettuce. There are also some plants in pots along the centre path that have not found their permanent home yet.
One thing that surprised me once everything was in the ground: tomatoes need a shocking amount of space. They are not polite about it. Remo researched this extensively and apparently if you crowd them it does not end well. The spacing between plants is more than you would expect. They are the high maintenance guests of the greenhouse and everyone else has to work around their schedule.
The one adjustment we have had to make is watering. No irrigation yet, which means someone has to go in there every day with a hose. That someone is Remo. I want to be very clear that this is his project and his job and I am simply here to document it and eventually eat the tomatoes.
Remo and the Tomatoes
I want to talk about this specifically because it genuinely delights me every single day.
Remo does not cook. This is a generous simplification. He makes a mean salad and his breakfasts are genuinely good, which means he is not without skills. But the chicken jerky years happened and we all remember them, so the greenhouse is a better outlet for his energy.
But give the man a greenhouse and apparently he becomes someone else entirely.
He has been watching YouTube videos about growing tomatoes with the focus of a person preparing for a very important exam. He knows about soil composition, watering schedules, pruning technique, which varieties do well in which conditions, and what the difference is between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. I also now know what the difference is between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes because he told me and I was paying attention.
The varieties he chose: cherry tomatoes, a beefsteak type, heirloom, and a few others I cannot name with confidence but he absolutely can. Every time Remo takes on a project he goes completely all in. Full research mode. YouTube rabbit holes. Opinions. He has opinions about tomato varieties that I did not know a person could have until I started living with one.
The pruning is a whole thing. You have to remove certain shoots so the plant grows straight and strong rather than wild and unruly. Remo learned this from YouTube and takes it very seriously. I find this so funny and so wonderful that I have no further commentary to add. It speaks for itself.
Everyone deserves a thing that is entirely theirs. The greenhouse is Remo’s thing and watching him have it is one of my favourite parts of living out here.
I did suggest he consider naming the tomato plants. He has not done this yet. I am working on it.
What Comes Next
We are just getting started. The plants are in, everything is growing, and summer is still ahead of us.
If the tomatoes deliver on Remo’s research I will report back with recipes. The herbs I already know what to do with, I cook for a living, I have some thoughts. But the one I am most excited about is the eggplant. If it cooperates I am making Salată de Vinete, which coincidentally you eat with tomatoes. It’s a traditional Romanian roasted eggplant dip that I grew up eating and that I have had on JoCooks for years. Homegrown eggplant from our own greenhouse going into a recipe from my childhood is the kind of thing that makes a very good summer.
I will write about this as the season goes. There will be more to report, more things Remo has learned from YouTube, and almost certainly something that does not go as planned. That is where the best stories come from anyway.
👉 Watch the greenhouse tour on Facebook.
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