At the end of last year's growing season, October 2010, I decided to put together a greenhouse or hoop house (depending on your definition) over our two raised garden beds. I was hoping for an extension of our growing season a bit. The tomatoes held on a bit longer than they would have if the full effect of the Atlanta frost had have gotten to them, but the PingTung eggplant still wilted away just from the cold.
What we didn't expect was just how much our various types of lettuce would grow throughout the winter. We planted red sails, deer tongue and arugula near the end of the fall season not knowing whether or not they'd even come up, they thrived! In fact, during the worst snow storm that we'd had since the early 1990's, we actually picked our greens and made salads from the garden. The broccoli got a very nice head start in the greenhouse as well!
I'd see several examples of small greenhouses online and being the do-it-yourselfer that I am, I put together a parts list and made a run to the hardware store.
A few things about our raised beds to start with. As with many people, we started with a single raised bed. I used untreated 2x10's with 2 stacked on top of each other. The second one, I wasn't quite as cautious and used 1x8's that I had left over from some work I'd done on the house.
I had enough sense to make these parallel to each other, but because of the slope of my yard I didn't make the ends line up with the other bed. Consequently, during the construction, I ended up taking one end off the first bed, the heaviest one of course, and moving it about 2 feet to line up with the other one. You really don't want to move one of these things!
I built it with a door and with sides that could be raised (as in the picture) on those warm spring days.
I wonder if anyone is interested in seeing some details about how I put it together, construction costs, passive heating and the like?
Let me know if you are and I'll put up a part 2 with some nifty ideas on how to keep the plastic on and what kinds of materials to use.
Oh... did I mention that it held up under 4 + inches of snow!
2014 Edit -
Living in the south, we don't often get all that much snow but this year we had a crazy ice storm. When I was able to get outside, the ice, which weighed several hundred pounds had cracked three of the ribs of our greenhouse! I ended up taking everything down and we now just have two raised beds with lots and lots of lettuce. I love the spring!
2014 Edit -
Living in the south, we don't often get all that much snow but this year we had a crazy ice storm. When I was able to get outside, the ice, which weighed several hundred pounds had cracked three of the ribs of our greenhouse! I ended up taking everything down and we now just have two raised beds with lots and lots of lettuce. I love the spring!
If you're interested in how to construct one using my design, see my post on DIY Greenhouse Construction.
Wow I can't believe it was able to hold up after that much snow. That is a really cool idea to build that for your garden to preserve your hard work. Have you checked out the roof gardens we talked about at Bread for the City, similar to your raised beds and a really neat setup. I love all of the gardening and promoting of sustainable living that is going on throughout communities.
ReplyDeleteI love your mini 'greenhouse'! What a great way to get out in the garden early.
ReplyDeleteMy little hoop house was flattened by the freak April 1 snow storm. The snow was heavy and the PVC just flattened to the ground.
ReplyDeleteThe lettuce over wintered and started up early even under the flatten plastic. That's what's really cool: You can start lettuce and arugula in September and grow it until the middle of December. Then it restarts growing again in February. Pretty cool.
If you really want to keep stuff like eggplant, try row covers inside the hoop house. This idea if from Eliot Coleman's book Four-season Harvest.
v nice.i'd like to see a part 2 plz.
ReplyDelete