Garden Moose

Garden Moose

Garden Moose is Loose!

Garden Moose is back from the Greenhouse and now writing daily for the www.Greenhouses.net Blog.

You can also check out his product reviews at www.Greenhouses.com.

Here are a few pages from Garden Moose's Greenhouse Kit Gardening Library

Climates in a Freestanding Greenhouse

You will find that no matter what type of freestanding greenhouse that you do choose to buy, the interior of your greenhouse – the heating, the cooling and how you water are going to be similar. A freestanding greenhouse is a hobby greenhouse or a building that stands alone, by itself, as your house or your shed would on your property, it is not attached to any other building.

 

You will find that often the conditions in the greenhouse are too hot or too cold because of the extreme weather conditions that exist across the country, but with a little bit of preparation and education you can use your hobby greenhouse year round with little or no troubles at all. Living in one of the most extreme regions, I have very cold (as far down as zero to sub zero conditions) and very hot weather (where in the summer months it can reach up to one hundred or one hundred and ten degrees some summers) so I have to be prepared for growing in various conditions. If you live in an area that is not so extreme you will be able to use your greenhouse even more than I do without the use of heat or additional cooling.

The conditions in a freestanding of the freestanding greenhouse allow you to start your plants in December or January for the spring outdoor planting seasons, and then you can extend your growing season in the late fall months by bringing your plants indoors when the frost and the cold weather starts to arrive. There are also many opportunities to start additional indoor plants in the months of July and in August so that you can have fresh vegetables and fresh flowers well into December in the greenhouse for your own enjoyment long after the snow arrives!

Winter Sun and the Greenhouse

Where I live during the cold months of December and January the hours are limited for sun where others who might live a little more to the south would receive at least twenty five percent more sunlight than I do. There are a few changes you can make when you know your short sunlight seasons are coming and here I am going to write about a few of these.

It is not hard to determine how much sunlight you get during a day during a certain month; all you have to do is look out your wintry window. When the sunlight is shiny against the panels of your greenhouse this would be the beginning of the sun day in the greenhouse. You can also tell in the evening when the sunlight is not glimmering off of the greenhouse in the evening that your sun day is over, even if the sun has not really gone down yet.

If you are getting less than ten hours of sun light a day, you need to watch your greenhouse carefully because you could actually be getting less than five hours of sun inside in the greenhouse. When the days shorten, the sunshine shortens, and the growing season in your greenhouse slows.

Some of the alternatives you have when the sun is not in full swing are to use the grow lights. Using your grow lights sparingly for portions of the day will keep your bills low, and using reflective pieces of material with your grow lights will spread the lights through out the greenhouse areas as well.

If you find that the sun is not enough during December and January you could easily make this your ‘between’ seasons. You could start getting ready to plant your seeds during the early and mid parts of January and then as the days start to get longer you can start to plant your seeds and make use of the solar sun for growing in your greenhouse once again.

Planning for Greenhouses

When you are researching the many types of greenhouses available the process may seem a little confusing. While there are many styles and types of greenhouses you will need to make a few decisions when you are ready to order a greenhouse. Some of these choices are based on money, how much you enjoy gardening, and what type of climate or grow zone you live in.

As you start the process, you may want to start by grabbing a notebook and taking notes while you are researching greenhouses so you can find the best hobby greenhouse for your needs. What will you be writing about the many types of greenhouses you find? Start like this:

Write down three things that you will expect your greenhouse to do. This would include if you want vents, how many doors, how large or what type of plants you want to grow.

Something else you can write down would be what size do you want. Take a room in your home, and compare the measurements. This is an easy way to think about what the inside of the greenhouse size will be.

Figure out your budget. Determine the amount of money you are going to spend on this project. While pricing will vary according to the actual type of materials that are used in your hobby greenhouse kit, if you don’t have the budget to fit the type of greenhouse you want to get, you may want to wait a few more months until you can purchase the exact greenhouse you want to get. Settling for something cheaper just because you want a greenhouse may end up costing you money in heating and in how your plants are raised.

One of the last things you need to list on your paper before comparing the greenhouses that are available is what do you expect it to look like. There are some very simple greenhouses, which do not cost much, but then there are very fancy greenhouses with multiple doors, vents, accessories and decorations that could be just what you have always dreamed of. When you make a choice based on what you thought the greenhouse should look like, what it should do, and at a price you can afford you will be happy for years to come.

Inexpensive Greenhouse Floorings

When you are buying a greenhouse, you are often left with one last question: What type of flooring should I have? What types of flooring are there available? The answers to these questions are totally up to you. When I built my greenhouse I choose a concrete flooring just because I wanted to add the heat and water to my greenhouse in the middle of the spring months – without the mess of mud or dirt.

I just don’t like big messes I guess you would say because when I use water I always make a mess. Like I said though there are many types of flooring that you can choose from, and it will depend on how much you want to spend in the greenhouse and what you are going to use the greenhouse to grow to help you choose what type of flooring you want. You could have a dirt floor, a stone floor, a shell floor covering, a brick floor, or a concrete or wood floor. Here we are going to discuss dirt floors, stone floors and shell floors for your greenhouse, as they are the most inexpensive.

A dirt floor is the most inexpensive. You will ‘pack’ the floor as you continue to walk on it and as you continue to put object in the greenhouse. There is an advantage to having a dirt floor – the water will absorb easily when you should spill or use the misters. If you are putting the greenhouse a few feet in to the ground you will also benefit from the natural heat of the dirt floor as well.

A stone floor requires a little bit of work but you could get all of your materials for free if you are a little bit creative. A stone floor is simply putting flat shaped large stones on the greenhouse floor put down into the dirt. You will still have dirt between the stones so water can easily absorb into the ground when you use watering systems. You can get free stones buy going to a place where someone is building a home, you could go out in to a wooded area that has a creek near by, or you could go to a major highway nearby that is built into the side of a mountain and pick rocks from the sides of the road. Of course you need truck and a strong back, but these are viable options for getting stones for free.

A shell floor in your greenhouse can be inexpensive if you use a little bit of your time and creativity in gathering the shell. Most all greenhouse kits are easily staked into the ground and you don’t even need to build a frame for the greenhouse to sit on so when you are left with a dirt floor, you can add shell to keep the dust and mud down if you like. Of course is you are making your greenhouse two or three feet down in to the earth you also will be taking advantage of the natural heating from the soil and you can also drain the water you use right back into the soil. In order to get free you would need to go along the sides of the road and scrape up the shell. This is easy in the country, but in the city you might have a little more problems. You can also buy shell in bags from your local home store fairly cheap, but you will have to buy just a few bags at a time to make the price seem small because it will take many bags to fill the floor of the greenhouse.

The Must Have for the Serious Gardener

While there are many things that different gardeners may recommend that you have in your greenhouse, I have recently discovered something I don’t know how I lived without in my greenhouse so I thought I would tell you a little about this little treasure. This is not going to be a sales ad, because you most likely will make this ‘item’ yourself, I can’t say that I have seen it sold anywhere in particular but I have come to realize that it is an important feature in my greenhouse.

This must have for a greenhouse is a potting bench. As simple as it seems I kept telling myself, What do I need that for? I have plenty of shelves in my greenhouse and a potting bench would only take up room. Well, once I actually made a bench I can’t figure out how I lived with out it!

This is a simple design that you can build yourself. Any size that you want, and you can custom fit the height as well for your own space in your greenhouse. The design in similar to a coffee table or a small end table that you might have in your home. just four legs and the outline of a top (this could be square or rectangular as needed to fit your little space). While you are only going to be using this when you are potting, transplanting or working on a certain plant, you can make this potting bench as little or as large as you like.

The four legs are simply 2 x 4’s that you can seal or paint to keep the moisture out. The rectangle or the square frame on top can also be made of the same 2 x 4 materials and painted or sealed as well. Over the center of the top you use chicken wire or hardware cloth that you can buy at your local hardware or home center. Making the wire tight across the top, fold down just a little over the edges so you can nail this wire onto the wooden frame, and then you are done!

I used to have dirt, stones and pots all over my greenhouse. Now when I am transplanting or potting a new plant, I work over my potting bench. Just a tip here, but I made my potting bench about counter high (like in my kitchen) because I didn’t like to bend over for long periods of time. When I am potting new plants, the excess dirt is caught below in my storage container as it falls through the wires! Simple and mess free. I can’t believe I didn’t make one of these earlier – good luck in making yours!

A Few Greenhouse Tricks

 

There are many differences in the layouts and the types of greenhouses that are used throughout the country. Many times gardeners will share tips with fellow gardeners to help save heat, seeds, growing time and a variety of other topics that involve the use of the greenhouse. Here are a few tips that I hope help you out during your gardening adventure in the hobby greenhouse.

If you have a soil floor in your greenhouse, dig a few feet into the earth before placing your greenhouse. During the winter months you can utilize some of the natural heat stored in the ground to cut your heating costs in the greenhouse.

Adding a little moisture to your dirt floor in the winter months will help hold the heat during the day and release it into the night. While I don’t understand this concept completely it was explained to me that the moisture helps the soil conduct the heat. But you do have to be careful about how much moisture you use in the greenhouse during the winter months, because since there is nowhere for the moisture to go, you can could black rot or mold in the greenhouse to start. Experiment with small amounts to start with.

Using black, capped containers of water in the greenhouse to absorb heat during the day, the heat will be released slowly into the greenhouse during the night. While it has been discussed about capped or uncapped – capped is best during the coldest winter months so that the heat is released even slower.

Salt will lower the freezing point of water. If you have very extreme conditions and you are going to abandon your greenhouse for the winter but you don’t want to empty your water containers you can add some salt to each container. Salt will lower the freezing point of water by at least twenty degrees.

Before erecting a hobby greenhouse with a foundation, you can use foam or rigid board insulation about the underside of the foundation to prevent the freezing ground below from affecting the interior of your greenhouse. While this is a minimal heat in insulating and cutting heat cots, if given the chance when starting a new greenhouse I would use this method in my greenhouse foundation.