Keeping the greenhouse cool in the dog days of summer can be a challenge for the new greenhouse gardener. Frequent monitoring is required to ensure the safety and health of your plants. There are several common methods for cooling a greenhouse.

Cool Fog Systems or Evaporative Coolers

One way to cool your greenhouse is to install a cool fog system. A cool fog system forces miniature droplets of water into the air of the greenhouse. This mist does not saturate the foliage of the plants because the droplets are too small and evaporate in the air. This process of condensation creates a lowered air temperature in the greenhouse. Another helpful tool to keep your greenhouse cool is an evaporative cooler.

Keeping the Greenhouse Cool in Summer: Ventilation

One of the simplest ways of cooling the greenhouse is to use a system of vents and exhaust fans. Vents placed near the roof of the greenhouse allow hot air to escape the greenhouse as it rises. This creates air movement in the greenhouse that pulls fresh air from outside the greenhouse inside through air vents open near the bottom of the greenhouse walls. Ventilation shafts placed in this manner create a constant flow of fresh air from the outside of the greenhouse. Usually, the ventilation openings are louvered to allow the gardener to open and close the vents to control the temperature inside the greenhouse.

Keeping the Greenhouse Cool: Shading

Another simple way to help control the air temperature inside the greenhouse during summer is shading. A retractable shading system is by far the most convenient. Blocking the sun’s rays from entering the greenhouse during peak temperatures can save the gardener money in active cooling costs.

Keeping the Greenhouse Cool in the Dog Days of Summer: Circulation Fans

Fans are a staple in nearly every greenhouse. Fans are used to help with pollination, circulate air, and help control the air temperature of the greenhouse. Ventilation fans should be placed no farther apart than 25 feet. If a greenhouse measures 25 feet in length or more, two fans are needed and should be spaced evenly in the greenhouse to provide proper ventilation.

Keeping the Greenhouse Cool in the Dog Days of Summer: Fan and Pad Systems

The fan and pad method of greenhouse cooling involves using a special pad placed at one end of the greenhouse. This special cellulose pads are fed a constant supply of water. Strategically placed fans draw air in through the pads, creating an evaporating effect as the water cools. This is the most common type of cooling system used in commercial greenhouses.

Keeping the greenhouse cool in the dog days of summer helps plants continue growing for optimal crop yields. Today’s greenhouse gardener has many choices when selecting a method of greenhouse cooling.

Selecting the right greenhouse gardening supplies is often a process of trial and error for most gardeners. Sometimes you get lucky and find a particular brand name product that meets your needs perfectly, but most often, you can spend hours browsing greenhouse catalogs and the shelves of your local gardening supply store to find those perfect greenhouse gardening supplies. Here are a few ideas to help you select the right supplies.

Know Your Budget Before Shopping for Greenhouse Gardening Supplies

Greenhouse gardening supplies are available in nearly every price range, but more expensive price tags do not always equate better products. Some greenhouse gardening supplies may be worth investing a few extra dollars. A quality built ergonimic gardening tool, or one with a lifetime guarantee, may be a good investment. Quality fertilizers and organic pesticides are also a worthwhile investment in your greenhouse gardening supplies inventory. Paying extra for special features and quality in the greenhouse gardening supplies department is often worth it in the long run. One great example is the greenhouse itself. You can find cheap greenhouses and possibly add some extra supports to try to stregthen them against the wind and weather. That might help get it through a few seasons, but more often that not, gardeners wish they had spent the money on a quality greenhouse the first time, so they could spend more time enjoying their hobby rather than repairing the greenhouse.

Be Social: Talk About Greenhouse Gardening Supplies

Gardeners are most often a social group of people. They love to share their love for greenhouse gardening and jump at the chance o show off the fruits of their labor. Joining a gardening club or even making a few friends at the local greenhouse supply store can help you glean valuable information about what greenhouse gardening supplies would best suit your needs. In a large group of gardeners, chances are good that someone has tried a particular product you are considering and can give you a hands-on opinion before you invest your hard-earned cash.

Surf the Net to Find Greenhouse Gardening Supplies

The Internet is bursting with information about greenhouse gardening supplies. Discussion forums, chat rooms, and website-rings all centering on gardening can easily be found with a simple Internet search. You can even comparison shop for all your greenhouse gardening supplies online to ensure you get the lowest price without ever leaving the house. Ordering greenhouse gardening supplies online has never been easier with secure shopping sites and a wide variety of greenhouse gardening supply sellers.
Selecting the right greenhouse gardening supplies for your particular gardening needs is a little easier with these quick tips.
 

There are countless advantages to container gardening. Many gardeners begin container gardening due to a lack of ground space for planting a traditional garden. Others simply use container gardening as an outlet for creative gardening. No matter what reason motivates you to try container gardening, the advantages are plentiful.

The Basic Benefits of Container Gardening

Container gardening is a great way to garden all year long! Container plants look terrific, are easily moved indoors or into your greenhouse during inclement weather, and are easy to care for. With container gardening, you control the condition of the soil for each plant. Container gardening lets you grow plants anywhere, even in an apartment or on your kitchen counter.

Visual Freedom

Container gardening allows gardeners the freedom of adventure. You can grow exotic plants, or try out a few hard to grow crops. Plus, if you move your container into a greenhouse during the winter, those once seasonal plants can be saved year after year!
The visual appeal of container gardening is spectacular. Exotic plants grow beside common houseplants and vibrant floral varieties.  An added bonus unique to container gardening is the freedom to select any combination of color, shape, and size containers to create varying visual presentations.

Mix and Match for Beneficial Results

Container gardening with a variety of complimentary and contrasting plants allows the gardener to choose plants that benefit one another. Planting ornamental flowers alongside edible plants attracts pollinating insects, while placing pots of French Marigolds next to potted tomatoes repels whiteflies. The only precaution when mixing containers in an arrangement is to keep poisonous plants away from the edibles to remove the possibility of eating the wrong plant by mistake.

Easy on the Knees

Container gardening is ideal for anyone with joint or mobility problems. The planted pots can be arranged on shelves for easy access without bending or stooping. Container gardening is often used in nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and children’s treatment homes to instill a love a gardening.  Bringing each individual container to eye level during the care of the plant also allows for a thorough inspection for pests and disease. This allows the gardener to catch any problems quickly and remove the plant from the vicinity of other containers to prevent spread of the disease or pests.

Less Watering Woes

Container gardening often begins with a layer of gravel or polystyrene to provide a drainage bed for perfectly watered soil. A plastic tube with holes drilled at intervals can be placed in the soil of thirsty plants to help disperse the fluid evenly throughout the container. This procedure helps distribute water to the roots of the plants, where it is needed most.

Container gardening provides endless hours of agriculture enjoyment for gardeners of every age and physical condition. Container gardening is inexpensive and easy to begin. It is a terrific way for experienced gardeners to expand their gardening horizons. It is also a great way to introduce a love of horticulture to others.

Modern greenhouse accessories are growing ever more sophisticated when it comes to temperature control, and most gardeners know what temperature their plants prefer - but what about humidity? This is a factor which many gardeners overlook, yet it can make a big difference to the health of your plants. Carefully controlled levels of humidity can help not only exotic plants like orchids but also ordinary plants like tomatoes, which will grow faster and larger in consistently humid conditions. Modern humidifying equipment makes it possible to provide your greenhouse plants with the levels of humidity they like best.

Most greenhouse coolers are fed through a hose, drawing water from the supply in your house, but they use very little water and very little power. They turn the water into a fine mist and use a fan to circulate it through the air inside the greenhouse. This creates a sort of fog which may make your greenhouse look a little odd from the outside but which will benefit the plants within.

As well as providing the appropriate humid conditions for your plants, greenhouse accessories like these can be useful in helping to cool your greenhouse on very hot days. Some gardeners consider them a better option than vents because they don’t introduce outside air, so they limit to risk of your plants becoming vulnerable to insects and disease.

If you haven’t yet experimented with humidifiers, now’s the time to do so. The technology has been improving fast and has finally reached a level where it can be relied upon to do a consistent job with minimal hassle. It’s easy to use, so you won’t need any special understanding of machinery or of the complex ways in which humidity can affect plants. Simply research what your plants need and set up the system to take care of it for you.

Besides being a place where you can grow interesting and useful plants, your greenhouse ought to be a place where you can relax. If you’ve spent many hours working there to make your plants beautiful, it’s a shame if you can’t take the time to sit around and enjoy them. Larger greenhouses can be a good place to sit with a book or some knitting, or to take tea with friends. They can provide you with a pleasant outdoor experience even in winter. But in order to use your greenhouse this way, you first have to find the right furniture for it, and that can be trickier than you might think.

Because space in the greenhouse is limited, it’s important to work out how your greenhouse furniture is going to fit. This means not only working out how you can squeeze it in, but also how you can actually use it and move around it. Benches are often more practical than chairs because they can easily be tucked away when out of use, and can also be used for standing on when cleaning the roof. Folding chairs are practical because they can be set aside easily when you need space to work. A small folding table can be handy both for holding drinks and for when you need an extra surface to manage tasks like potting.

Like all greenhouse accessories, greenhouse furniture needs to be water resistant. The humid atmosphere of a greenhouse will soon damage unprotected wood and wickerwork, and molds growing on your furniture can spread to your plants. Be careful to choose furniture which has been properly sealed with a water-repellent paint or varnish. Metal furniture should be resistant to rust - often the most practical option is furniture which has been coated with a layer of plastic.

Don’t just buy the first well-made greenhouse furniture you see - take your time and choose something which co-ordinates with the overall look of your greenhouse. Like your plants and greenhouse accessories, it should be part of a pleasing whole. Then your greenhouse will really be a place in which you can enjoy spending time.

Building a portable greenhouse can be a good activity for the whole family. Decide on a weekend for building the structure. To prepare for this activity, you need to buy your building materials beforehand.

What You Need

There are a number of things that you need to build a good portable greenhouse. First, you will need a design or a plan. You cannot build your greenhouse without any idea of what goes where. Aside from the design, you will need materials. You need some metal, PVC or wood materials for your frame, door and vent. Read some pros and cons of each type of greenhouse framing. Find light-weight materials for your frames. Remember that your greenhouse is meant to be portable not stationery so you need strong but light materials. Aside from framing material, you will also need UV resistant greenhouse plastic covering material. Research your greenhouse covering options to make sure you pick a covering that is best for your plants. Check the warranty on your greenhous covering as well to make sure you select a covering that will last.

Since coming up with a good design and shopping for the right materials can take time, you might want to buy a portable greenhouse kit instead. The good thing about buying these portable greenhouse kits is that they already have everything you need to build your greenhouse. Moreover, the kits come with instructions on how to put things together so you need not come up with your own design. Note that designing your own greenhouse can take a lot of time and effort on your part.

When you are advised that you can treat your greenhouse like an extra room of your house, somewhere to relax and get away from things, it gives you a good feeling - but there’s more. Like any room inside your house, your greenhouse needs to be kept clean, especially a glass greenhouse. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that no greenhouse is so perfect it can take care of itself. However, if you do make the effort to look after it well, you’ll find that it’s highly rewarding. Here are some helpful tips when cleaning your glass greenhouse.

No matter how carefully you treat your greenhouse glass, it will, over time, become smudged and stained. In the long term, scratched or cracked panels may need to be replaced, but there’s a lot you can do to improve the appearance of your greenhouse before you reach that stage. The first thing to do is to wash it regularly. Washing the outside is fairly simple, and can be done with ordinary cleaning agents and a garden hose (though you should avoid using high pressure hoses as they can potentially shatter the glass. If you don’t have a hose you can use buckets of water and a sponge. Be careful to clear up any soapy residue.

Caring for greenhouses is more difficult when it comes to the interior. Some plants cannot tolerate soap compounds, so you’ll need to choose an appropriate plant-friendly cleaner from your garden products supplier. Be careful when you clean and ensure that the run-off doesn’t end up in the soil. If you are scrubbing panes to remove difficult dirt, be careful not to erode the seals which secure them in their frame.

Caring for greenhouses involves paying ongoing attention to the build up of waste from fallen leaves and from debris carried in by your own feet. If you set aside an hour once a week to go through your greenhouse carefully, picking up any debris and making sure it’s in good condition, you plants will thank you for it. A dirt-free environment reduces the risk of disease and clean panes mean they’ll get al the more light to help them grow big and strong.

No matter how carefully you try to look after your greenhouse, sometimes you just won’t be able to be there. If you don’t have a family member, friend or neighbor who can look after your plants in your absence, you’ll need to consider technological ways of making sure they get what they need. During short absences it’s usually sufficient simply to make sure that your plants watered, and there are several ways of doing this.

The simplest way to ensure that your greenhouse plants have access to sufficient moisture is to use a humidifier or mist system on a timer to create a misty atmosphere in the greenhouse. However, this blanket approach takes no account of the preferences of individual plants and may be overwhelming to young or delicate specimens. It also creates a more favorable habitat for disease organisms which can progress unchecked while you’re not there to deal with them.

A subtler approach involves setting up localized water sprays to target individual plants or rows of plants with a drip water system. These simple greenhouse accessories can be connected to a single water supply and timer, or can be provided with separate timers. You can also add nutrients to the water.

Capillary mats are the latest thing in greenhouse irrigation technology, and represent a good solution for seedlings and small potted plants. You simply place one end of the mat in a tray of water, extend the rest of it over a polythene mat, and place your plants on top where they can wick water through the mat according to their needs.

With all these different irrigation solutions available, it’s down to you to decide what’s most appropriate for your greenhouse. With careful planning and at only minor cost, you can avoid over watering and make sure that your plants never dry out, even when you can’t be there.

When you buy a greenhouse, it’s tempting to think that you’re all ready to go, but in most cases you won’t get very far with just a few potted plants standing on the floor! The first and most important of greenhouse accessories to get right is greenhouse staging. Since this is something you’ll want to keep using for the lifetime of the greenhouse, you’ll need to choose it carefully.

The first thing to consider about greenhouse staging is how much weight it can bear. You may not think of plants as being very heavy, but the soil they’re rooted in certainly is, and ornamental plant pots can also add up to quite a burden. Some commercially available greenhouse staging sadly isn’t up to coping with this. It’ll start to sag after a little while, and sometime it will collapse altogether. Obviously this isn’t a risk you’ll want to take. Suitable staging should be able to bear 100’s of pounds of weight, so check the manufacturer’s advice carefully. Even if you don’t plan to use all this capacity in the immediate term, it’ll keep your options flexible into the future.

Greenhouse staging also needs to be waterproof. The best choice for this is stainless steel, heavy grade aluminum, or composite framing. There are attractive wooden staging arrays available, but if you buy one of these you must make sure that it’s been properly treated to make it’s water resistant (not just water repellent). It’s also a good idea to re-cover staging like this with a water-repellent paint or varnish every couple of years.

Finally, make sure that the staging you buy gives you the space you need to work. This may sound obvious, but many people fail to measure properly before spending money on something which won’t fit into their greenhouse comfortably. Your staging should provide space for all your plants and greenhouse accessories (consider whether you may want a separate tier for these), but it should also leave you room to move around. If you’re disabled or have trouble bending, make sure it’s at a suitable height for working on. Make sure you’ve got room for supplies as well as for the things you plan to use immediately. Well chosen staging will be with you for a long time.

A greenhouse is an excellent place to relax and get away from it all, something which can be all the more important for people with mobility difficulties which make getting about awkward and tiring. Many people get into greenhouse gardening when they retire and want to be able to keep up the hobby as they gradually find themselves less mobile. In these situations, it’s important to find greenhouse designs which make access as easy as possible.

There are several things to consider when seeking out accessible greenhouse designs. First is the flooring. Although gravel floors are ideal for many types of greenhouse, they can be awkward for people who need sticks to balance and they can be more difficult to get up from - without sustaining further injury - if you should fall. Concrete floors are easier to cope with and are also ideal for wheelchair users. They can be laid so that there’s a smooth path extending through and out of your greenhouse to your home. Just remember that they don’t provide such good drainage as gravel, so you’ll have to take extra care to ensure your greenhouse doesn’t get too damp.

An accessible greenhouse needs to have an easy-open door or doors, a factor which is sometimes forgotten by well-meaning relatives choosing greenhouses for elderly and disabled relatives. It also needs to have plenty of space for moving around inside. For people who are unsteady on their feet, it’s a good idea to have well-secured, strong staging which can be used as a support. When choosing a greenhouse design for use with a wheelchair, make sure staging is at an accessible height - not just for the plants themselves, but also for the supplies they’ll need and for the tools required to work with them.

Greenhouse gardening is a highly adaptable hobby and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be accessible to everybody. Simply choosing the right greenhouse can make all the difference.