10:48 - 11 February 2011
That’s a quite a far-reaching question as it does depend on what you want to use your greenhouse for. But assuming you are a newbie to greenhouses and have your very first greenhouse to start growing, the first thing you need is good ventilation. Your greenhouse has a door, which needs to be close fitting and ideally wide enough to wheel a barrow through. It probably has a window or two that open manually, but to get the best airflow in your greenhouse you need vents that open low down and also vents up high to allow hot air to escape. You can buy automatic opening kits that fit onto greenhouse vents and will open the windows when the internal temperature rises, which is ideal if you work or are often away.
Once you’ve got the airflow sorted, then you can start to set the greenhouse up, as you want it. It’s always a good idea to see how other gardeners use their greenhouse space, so ask around and visit friend’s greenhouses or those in public gardens. Most gardeners are generous and happy to show you inside their garden haven. Bear in mind that there are three main ways of keeping a greenhouse through winter, unheated and cold, frost free and cool, or heated resulting in a warm greenhouse. You need to make a decision on how you intend to treat your greenhouse and your greenhouse plants over the winter pretty early on or you may find you have lots of plants that need to come indoors over the winter months. Bear in mind too that heating a greenhouse can be a costly affair as it is rarely double-glazed and pretty poorly insulated.
Many gardeners have one area of the greenhouse floor to plant into for greenhouse tomatoes and other hothouse plants. On the other side they have a potting bench and some staging and shelves. Most greenhouse growers will admit that they never have enough room in their glasshouse to grow everything that they want to grow, so space management is important.
The potting bench is a great place to start, as it is here that most greenhouse gardeners sow seeds, pot up plants and generally make their mud pies. To keep mess to a minimum it’s a great idea to have a potting tray in place that will catch any spilt compost so tat you can collect it up and reuse it or add it to the compost heap.
The greenhouse staging and benches are for growing on your seedlings and cuttings. You need as much surface area as you can fit into your greenhouse to enable you to grow as many plants as possible. If you plan to start sowing early you really need a propagator and if you want one that is heated you ideally need a power supply. This needs to be installed by a qualified electrician to meet the current regulations. A power supply enables you to have electric lighting and heating in your greenhouse and barring a power cut is a reliable way to provide both.
Probably the one of the last considerations is the watering. Ideally you need a greenhouse tap inside the greenhouse to supply clean mains water to water your young protégés. With a tap installed you can fit an automatic time to any watering system, but ideally to a micro drip system that will direct water to where it is needed the most, i.e. at the roots of your plants. A watering can with a long reach is also a good idea and self-watering trays with clean capillary matting are also a good investment.
Finally you need some plants, some pots and modules and some compost and most gardeners would agree that a chair and a cushion are a great finishing touch to a garden room where you are bound to spend many happy hours of your life.
