My $65 Greenhouse!
Posted by: TammyIt’s done! I have a greenhouse!
For several years I envisioned creating a greenhouse utilizing the two vertical fences in my garden and here it is!
Parts of the set up will remain year-round but the plastic will be able to come down or possibly I can roll it up and position it over the center supports. I haven’t worked through it all quite yet. Yes, I’m sure I’ll run into a hiccup or two with my creation but I have to start somewhere.
Here is how the area looked before the project:
I intended to use trees we had to cut down off our property as cross-members but there was absolutely no way to dig them out of the snow. A quick trip to our local building supply store and a chat with the owner (love going there and working with them on projects not to mention buying local and avoiding the big box store) led us to use 3/4″ galvanized conduit piping for the cross-members. 8′ sections were a mere $4.36 each! We bought three sections of piping, a bag of zip ties, a 20′ x 25′ roll of heavy-duty plastic and one roll of gorilla tape for less than $65! The plastic and gorilla tape were the most expensive items.
First, we used deck screws, drilled into the cedar upright poles, as supports for the pipe sections and then used the zip ties to anchor the pipes to the screws:
We tried to protect the heavy-duty plastic by wrapping the ends of the piping with the gorilla tape. We also placed a length of tape over each end of the vertical fencing where the horizontal wires might have poked through the plastic. We tied all three support poles together with twine. We ran a pair of lines at ninety-degree angles to the support poles. This lines support the plastic in case of rain or *gasp* snow! I’m not sure you can really see the inside too well but here is a picture inside the greenhouse with the plastic in place.
I placed a thick layer of straw on the ground because mud season has begun and I don’t want to tear up the ground. You can just see it at the lower left side of the photo. There are also quick clamps holding the plastic down along the vertical fencing. The ends are folded gift-box-style and held down with two large blocks of stone. The winds had started to pick up dramatically as we finished the project last evening and we noticed the plastic at the top of the cedar poles was stressing a bit. My middle son, the engineering marvel that he is, whipped out the gorilla tape again and wrapped a few swipes around the top of a few poles where the plastic was showing wear already.
Our final bit of engineering was making emergency tie downs to attach the wildly flapping plastic to the metal cross-members. We placed a piece of reinforcing tape on both sides of the plastic just over the metal cross member and then placed a pair of holes through the the tape allowing us to wrap a zip-tie through and then around the pole. The tape keeps the plastic from tearing out under any stress. So with nothing really flapping in increasing winds, we went in for the night and prayed our work would hold up.
And this morning…
IT’S STILL HERE! Nothing flapping or lifting in the strong winds and nothing torn or damaged!
My plan at this point is to take the empty milk jugs I had saved aside for maple-sugaring season and fill them with water, then place the filled water jugs inside the greenhouse. The water will absorb the heat of the day and then re-release the heat back into the greenhouse each night. I have access to a growing bed adjacent to the left vertical fence which is defrosting and will be perfect for spinach, radishes and other greens. I’m going to make a vertical growing planter out of a recycled wooden pallet, too. I saw that online and can’t wait to try it out. Extending my growing season is the ultimate goal of our greenhouse. But for now, I can relish in the heat of my greenhouse! Maybe I’ll put on my capris, make a fruity little drink with an umbrella, put my lounge chair inside and pretend it’s summer here in New England!
