Making Better Use Of Your Cold Greenhouse
Growing vegetables in a cold greenhouse - particularly those vegetables traditionally grown in warmer climes such as peppers, chilli, tomatoes, melons and cucumbers is really easy. The extension of the growing season caused by the additional shelter from the cold greenhouse permits you to fully grow and ripen your fruit and vegetables. They are so much tastier than store bought varieties because you use them fresh, you know exactly what chemicals have - and have not- been used on them and you are helping the environment by not using air miles to aquire them. Especially if you practice organic greenhouse gardening techniques.
The additional costs involved in heating and ventilating a heated greenhouse will often overshadow the advantages to be gained with a fully heated greenhouse, even though the gains in crops can be very good. A well situated cold greenhouse can provide a lot of sheler and aditional heat in early spring, allowing you to sow seed earlier and get your crops growing earlier. The shelter, and late summer sun will also extend the season into the early autumn. You can also overwinter frost tender plants by providing some simple additional double insulation with bubble wrap. You will get much more enjoyment from your greenhouse gardening
What to Grow in a cool Greenhouse
Your main crops to grow will be the previously mentioned traditional cold greenhouse summer crops. Don’t forget that you can also grow high quality low cost fruit crops in the cold greenhouse. By growing tight against the walls or acroos the roof, most fruit crops take little space. Be aware, however,that some fruit plants will severely block the light. However, since you would normally be providing additional greenhouse shading suring the summer, this may not be such a great problem.
Because it is that much warmer inside the greenhouse than outside, it is possible to grow early vegetables in it, lettuce and radish come to mind. The cold greenhouse is also good for raising plants from seed, for planting out later. You need to bear in mind the earliest date at which the soil will be warm enough to plant out, before deciding to sow seed in the greenhouse. There is no point in sowing too early. The result will be vulnerable soft leggy plants that will be slow to establish.
The cold greenhouse is also great for growing many of the herbs from the mediteranean countries.These can be grown in pots so that when the weather is warm enough outside, you can put the pots by the kitchen door to provide for easy harvesting when you want to use them.
Some vegetable plants do much better if raised indoors first before planting out into the garden. Leeks and Sweetcorn should both be grown in 3″ pots until their girth is the size of a pencil, then plant them out. They will grow much more strongly and you will have no holes in your beds.
Many flowering and foliage plants can be raised from seed in the cool greenhouse. Both bedding plants and indoor plants can be inexpensively produced this way. The cost of raising bedding plants as compared to buying them is about 100 to 1. It is worth having a cold greenhouse just for this reason.
Owning and using a cold greenhouse is so satisfying that once you have tried one, you will never want to be without it.