A BUILD-IT-YOURSELF PINE POLE GREENHOUSE

Image Gallery The Goddards built their lowcost greenhouse on a south-facing slope to maximize its solar gain...

by Christine and Wilson Goddard

A greenhouse can be a reliable source of fresh winter food. Many of these structures, though, are well beyond the limits of the average budget and that's why we are pleased to present...

In our pan of northern California, maintaining a high level of food self-sufficiency isn't just practical—it's all but necessary! We live in the Mendocino National Forest region, and—though this may come as a surprise to people who've never visited the upper portion of the Golden State—from November through May the road from our ranch to town is often impassable. (Our mountainous, 4,000-degree-day area has quite a variable climate. Although it rarely gets below 16°F, it can also snow in June!) Therefore, we've learned to rely on homegrown food during the winter months. Much of our cold-weather stockpile consists of stored produce from our summer garden; but not long ago, in search of more culinary variety and vitamins, we decided to build the low-cost greenhouse pictured here. Its performance as a producer of fresh winter foods has surprised even us, and there's no reason why anyone with a suitable south-facing piece of soil can't duplicate our do-it-yourself greenhouse.

LOW COST, CAREFUL DESIGN, SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION
If money is no object, I suppose a person could spend just about any amount of cash on a contractor-built greenhouse. However, not only were we determined to grow our own winter vegetables, but we aimed to do so without generating start-up costs that would effectively have us paying triple the store-bought price for our homegrown produce for years to come.

First of all, we arranged with the U.S. Forest Service to purchase a number of knob-cone pines growing on a ridge near our home. The price was right (low!), and pole-building construction is, as anyone who's read the Homestead Handbook in MOTHER'S last issue knows, both effective and easy to learn. We glazed the structure with sheet plastic and simply worked the soil within the greenhouse to avoid having to build expensive and complicated growing beds. Finally, the greenhouse doesn't cost a thing to operate (other than what we spend to fertilize and water the plants), because it uses only the sun's energy for heat. . . right on through the clouds and snow of winter.