The winter comes. The nights draw in and we forget the decking and the patio until the spring. But in the greenhouse it is summer all year. With a greenhouse it is possible to have a little piece of summer that stays with us through the dark winter evenings and the snow.
Heating a greenhouse used to be an expensive business. But with modern materials that is no longer true. It is now possible to heat a greenhouse quite economically. What was once a luxury is available to everyone.
A twin wall polycarbonate greenhouse is double glazed and will keep in the heat. You can use an electric heater that is controlled by a thermostat. Very little heat will escape into the outside environment. By carefully regulating the temperature it is possible to keep the bills under control.
If you keep the temperature a little above freezing you can grow plants that like fairly cool temperature. A display of cyclamen, for example, would be a delight. When we keep them in our homes they easily get too hot. A frost free greenhouse would be ideal for them. You can bring one or two in to the house for a day or two before returning them to the greenhouse to be revived in the cooler temperature.
There are a whole range of plants that are sold as house plants but really hate the dry atmosphere. Think of all those lovely plants that die after a few weeks. Crotons with their beautiful leaves or Schizanthus, the poor man's orchid or butterfly flower, as it is sometimes known, they love humidity. In a greenhouse you can give them the conditions they need.
Many spectacular plants, such as the bird of paradise flower, or the strelizia, only need night time temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. That is not hard to achieve. In the day time the sun will raise the temperature for you. You will need day time heating on only a few days of the year.
Put one of your garden chairs in the greenhouse and sit there in the winter sun listening to some music surrounded by flowers and greenery. The great thing about a greenhouse is you can use it pretty much however you want.
I know people who keep fish in their greenhouses. A small pool easily freezes over if you have hard winters in your part of the world. You can lose your fish that way. In the greenhouse the water stays free of ice and you can feed your prize koi carp right through the winter.
Interior designers often talk about bringing the garden into the house. Well, with a greenhouse you are really intermingling garden and house. Your greenhouse can become a room devoted to plants or an extension of the garden.
But maybe the kitchen is more your thing and you want to grow fruit and vegetable crops in your greenhouse. You want the taste of fresh picked produce right through the winter. That can be done too.
You can grow all kinds of crops in you greenhouse. Salads are probably the easiest of all. Fresh lettuce, rocket, spinach and other leaves can be grown on a cut and come again basis. Herbs can be done the same way. All you have to do when you want to make a salad is to pop out to the greenhouse and pull a few leaves.
Salad takes on another dimension when it is that fresh. Just keep a raincoat or an umbrella by the kitchen door. Tomatoes are also simple to grow through the winter. They need heat. They like to be about 70 degrees.
You should also think about lighting if you want to grow crops in the winter. Most fruit and vegetables need longer day lengths than a northern winter allows. Fluorrescent lights are fairly good and cheap to run but you will get the best results from grolights that mimic the spectrum of natural daylight. They are metal halide or high pressure sodium lights that have a reflector to increase the amount of light. You can also make reflectors to go round the plants from ordinary aluminum baking foil. That can be a goof idea even when you are relying on sunlight in the winter.
Whatever you are growing in your greenhouse you must think about ventilation. You need the air to move through the greenhouse. In the winter when you want to conserve heat this can be done with a ventilation fan. They are not unlike the ones used in kitchens and bathrooms or in cooker hoods. You can modify one of those if you are handy with tools or buy one that is purpose made for the greenhouse.
If you really want to conserve heat you can fit a flexible hose to the vent and feed the expelled air back into the greenhouse. For extra effect you can run the hose into a pit filled with black rocks. The warm air will heat up the rocks which will act as a storage heater, slowly giving off heat through the night.
So whether you go for a greenhouse that is a place to sit and watch the plants and fish or a greenhouse that is intended to produce crops there are good reasons to think about greenhouse gardening.
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