2. Greenhouse Checklist: Before You Build

Don’t waste your money; figure out your needs before you buy your greenhouse kit or supplies. Answer this quick questionnaire to pin down your goals, abilities, and budget, so that you can achieve greenhouse gardening success.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Leah Webb: So initially, I purchased this greenhouse for my own garden. I wanted to be able to extend my season on both ends. I wanted to be able to start my plants earlier. I wanted to be able to grow leafy greens and things like beets and carrots over the winter, which I was successful and able to do, and I’m gonna share all of those methods with you.

But my greenhouse quickly became an integral part of my business

My name is Leah Webb. I am the author of The Grain-Free, Sugar-Free, Dairy-Free Family Cookbook. I’m also the author of The Seven Step Homestead. What I have seen time and time again is that people are interested in building their own homestead, but they’re often overwhelmed with that process. So I tried to break that down into small, manageable steps in order to, again, take away the overwhelm.

So in chapter five of The Seven Step [00:01:00] Homestead, I talk about four-season growing, and one of the main ways that I’m able to grow year-round is by using my greenhouse. I am a garden consultant. I own and operate a small landscaping company, and we design, install, and maintain edible landscapes. So everything that I do is in hopes of teaching people and showing people that real food is accessible and trying to make that process easier and more enjoyable.

Now, like many of us, I have invested a large amount of money into my garden and homestead, and I will say that the greenhouse is likely the only entity that has actually paid for itself. Now, some of that is because it is such an integral part of my business, but some of that is because of the number of plants that I’m able to grow from seed that are going into my own home garden.

So any gardener knows that it is far easier to start a plant from a plant rather than try to plant a seed. My success rate has gone far up, and that is an expense that I’m not having to [00:02:00] pay every year because I’m able to grow everything on my own. Now, the greenhouse that I’m working with is a 325 square foot polycarbonate greenhouse.

Now, I’ll talk more about the different glazing options, but the glazing simply refers to the coating that is on your greenhouse. So polycarbonate is going to be the hard plastic. Polyethylene, PE film, is going to be the soft plastic that has to be replaced every three to five years. And then you can use glass.

Glass is a great option if you don’t have any type of anything around you that could potentially break it. But in my case, as I’ll discuss, polycarbonate was the best choice in that I don’t have to replace it often, and it’s extremely durable. Now, I chose a Gothic shape greenhouse for heavy snow load.

We do not get frequent snows here in western North Carolina in zone 7A, but the snows that we do get are extremely heavy, so I needed to make sure that the weight of the snow could be [00:03:00] held up by my greenhouse. Now, I also think it’s important to understand how a greenhouse works so that you are setting yourself up for realistic expectations when it comes to what you’re gonna be doing.

Now, a greenhouse gets warm because of the sun. So when the sun is out, it’s gonna be holding the heat, and it gets extremely warm, much, much warmer inside your greenhouse than it is outside. But as soon as the sun goes down, your greenhouse is gonna quickly lose that heat, and overnight, it’s only gonna be about five to 10 degrees warmer than it is outdoors.

The same is true for really cloudy days. You’re not gonna be getting that heat from the sun, and so your greenhouse is not actually going to be that warm. So I like to explain this to people so that they understand the goal and what it is that they’re trying to grow. A greenhouse offers protection in that it will keep heavy rains, heavy frost, heavy winds off of your plants, which is an additional benefit, but it’s not necessarily going to be keeping your [00:04:00] plants warm overnight.

So knowing this, it’s going to set you up for reasonable expectations and help guide you in the decisions that you make on which greenhouse you buy, what size, what shape, what’s the glazing, and then how it is that you’re gonna use it. So now that we understand how a greenhouse works, we can get into the other more fun stuff, which is how to choose a greenhouse, how to construct it, and how it is that you’re gonna be using it, such as summer growing, cool season growing, and then seed starting.

Greenhouse Building Resources

• Build-Along: Constructing a Greenhouse (Climate Victory Garden Series)
• DIY Greenhouse Plans: Cattle Panel Greenhouse (Countryside Magazine)
• Should I Buy a Greenhouse? Greenhouse Kit Guide