Posts tagged "greenhouses"

Greenhouse – Maintaining Your Greenhouse

Introduction

With the United States government pushing to use our food for things other food, it has caused and will continue to cause our food prices to rise dramatically. For example, our government requires that our gasoline contain ethanol. We produce our ethanol by converting our corn to add to our gas.

By doing this, it removes corn from our table and corn from the feed we use for our cattle and poultry. We then seek other products to replace the higher priced corn and meat. This higher demand for other products causes their prices to go up also. Plus the emerging nations are demanding a better quality diet, causing more demand and higher prices.

To counter this people are reverting to vegetable gardens and greenhouses. Once you get a greenhouse, you will have to maintain it. Here is my experience with maintaining a greenhouse that I had in Alaska.

Soil

Being in a confined area, the dirt you use needs to be kept fertile. In Alaska, I could send a soil sample to the state government for analysis. They would send the results back with recommendations on how to make it more fertile.

This usually meant to add certain fertilizers to the soil to perk it back up. In some cases, I just replaced the soil with new, fresh soil.

Keeping your soil fresh was the hardest part of maintaining my greenhouse.

Building Maintenance

My greenhouse structure was made of wood and Plexiglas. The Plexiglas I kept clean by washing it down with the garden hose to keep the dirt off it. This allowed for more sunlight and better growing conditions.

The wood portion I painted about every three years, and of course I, painted it green.

Fan

I had electricity run to my greenhouse to allow for operation of an exhaust fan. Periodically I applied grease to the bearings to allow it to rotate freely.

Water Source

It is a good idea to have a convenient source of water for your greenhouse. I piped water to my greenhouse to help water the plants. At the end of the growing season, I would drain the water from the pipes to keep the pipes from freezing in the winter.

Conclusion

The hardest part in maintaining your greenhouse is the maintenance of the soil. Keeping your greenhouse painted makes it more acceptable to the neighborhood. Other maintenance includes cleaning of the Plexiglas, maintaining your exhaust fan and draining your water pipe at the end of the season before the winter sets in.

A bit of humor...


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