- Joined
- Jan 2, 2013
- Messages
- 31
- Reaction score
- 4
- Location
- Longmont, Colorado
- Hardiness Zone
- 5a
- Country
I've experimented in the past with a basic small hoop greenhouse, but it wasn't very convenient for watering the plants. This year I decided to rip out the entire garden and rebuild everything.
My garden plot is an L shape in the corner of the yard. Each leg extends about 20' from the fence line and is 4' wide. Originally I had broken this up into 8' plots so I had some walkways, but this turned out to be more hassle than helpful. The individual plots were just too small to get a tiller into, so I turned everything by hand and it's never gotten mixed very well in the past 15 years. This year I pulled out all the rotting landscaping timbers and transferred the entire plot into one continuous section. Instead of having a hard corner, I cut the center at 45-degree angles so I can walk the tiller through easier. Also the back corner of the fence now has a lot of space to set up a 55-gal composting bin! The entire plot was bordered with 2x8 redwood, and because of the new planned greenhouse, I made sure to level out the redwood as a guide for everything else. I've had trouble in the past with the English ivy growing underneath the old landscape timbers, so I'm hoping that because the new framework is redwood, and that it goes deeper in the ground, this will stop the intrusions. (Growing over the TOP of the frame is ok, I can rip those vines out easily!)
So now that the garden patch itself has been rebuilt, I've started working on the new greenhouse. This one will be a full walk-in style built from 1" PVC pipe. The structure will be 6' wide (15" past the garden towards the fence, and 9" towards the yard). My neighbors have huge bushes growing up against the fence, about 8' tall -- not good for my garden getting sunlight these days, but very helpful in providing shelter for the greenhouse. So the idea is that the back side of the greenhouse, along the fence, will become the walkway during the off-season, and the plants will be grown on shelves at the front side, where the sun will more easily reach. Because the greenhouse is expected to be taken down during the Summer months, I needed a way to anchor the poles without making them permanent. What I am doing is using 12" lengths of 1.25" sched40 (thickwall) PVC pipe, drilling a hold 1.5" from the end, and putting a short piece of rebar through the pipe. The rebar end then gets buried in the ground, and the top of the pipe is leveled with the top of the redwood frame (which is why I had to level out the whole garden plot above). This gives be anchored pockets that I can drop the greenhouse vertical poles into, and if I have any trouble with the wind I can drill the pipes to pin them to the ground anchors. It's a LOT of prep work to get everything in place, but once its done it should make setting up the greenhouse go really fast. Unfortunately I need to get these anchors completed before I plant my garden, so I don't trample any new plants.
The greenhouse itself should be fairly straightforward. I'm using 1" pipe at 3-foot intervals for the sides. I'm still debating how I will lay out the roof -- the 45-degree bend in the middle will make it difficult to get a smooth line of pipe through. I'm thinking of using 1/2" PVC every 2 feet, and instead of using regular elbows and fittings, instead I would drill 5/8" holes in the 1" horizontal walls and simply set the roof pipes in place (letting the plastic cover hold it down). Once I have the walls in place, I'll come back to that. For shelving, I'm just going to continue using the PVC, and add fittings right on the walls. Then I can lay plywood across the PCV framework, or maybe find some open grating to use so that water spills just drain into the ground. The idea is to get plants started on the shelves, and then the bigger stuff like tomatoes I can transfer straight into the ground underneath the shelves. More importantly, I can extend the END of the growing season significantly... We usually get one crazy frost for a couple days in October, then it's warm again for another month beyond that. If I can protect my tomatoes from the frost, I'll get a lot more from the plants.
Lots of work still, but I think this will be a really nice setup once I'm finished.
My garden plot is an L shape in the corner of the yard. Each leg extends about 20' from the fence line and is 4' wide. Originally I had broken this up into 8' plots so I had some walkways, but this turned out to be more hassle than helpful. The individual plots were just too small to get a tiller into, so I turned everything by hand and it's never gotten mixed very well in the past 15 years. This year I pulled out all the rotting landscaping timbers and transferred the entire plot into one continuous section. Instead of having a hard corner, I cut the center at 45-degree angles so I can walk the tiller through easier. Also the back corner of the fence now has a lot of space to set up a 55-gal composting bin! The entire plot was bordered with 2x8 redwood, and because of the new planned greenhouse, I made sure to level out the redwood as a guide for everything else. I've had trouble in the past with the English ivy growing underneath the old landscape timbers, so I'm hoping that because the new framework is redwood, and that it goes deeper in the ground, this will stop the intrusions. (Growing over the TOP of the frame is ok, I can rip those vines out easily!)
So now that the garden patch itself has been rebuilt, I've started working on the new greenhouse. This one will be a full walk-in style built from 1" PVC pipe. The structure will be 6' wide (15" past the garden towards the fence, and 9" towards the yard). My neighbors have huge bushes growing up against the fence, about 8' tall -- not good for my garden getting sunlight these days, but very helpful in providing shelter for the greenhouse. So the idea is that the back side of the greenhouse, along the fence, will become the walkway during the off-season, and the plants will be grown on shelves at the front side, where the sun will more easily reach. Because the greenhouse is expected to be taken down during the Summer months, I needed a way to anchor the poles without making them permanent. What I am doing is using 12" lengths of 1.25" sched40 (thickwall) PVC pipe, drilling a hold 1.5" from the end, and putting a short piece of rebar through the pipe. The rebar end then gets buried in the ground, and the top of the pipe is leveled with the top of the redwood frame (which is why I had to level out the whole garden plot above). This gives be anchored pockets that I can drop the greenhouse vertical poles into, and if I have any trouble with the wind I can drill the pipes to pin them to the ground anchors. It's a LOT of prep work to get everything in place, but once its done it should make setting up the greenhouse go really fast. Unfortunately I need to get these anchors completed before I plant my garden, so I don't trample any new plants.
The greenhouse itself should be fairly straightforward. I'm using 1" pipe at 3-foot intervals for the sides. I'm still debating how I will lay out the roof -- the 45-degree bend in the middle will make it difficult to get a smooth line of pipe through. I'm thinking of using 1/2" PVC every 2 feet, and instead of using regular elbows and fittings, instead I would drill 5/8" holes in the 1" horizontal walls and simply set the roof pipes in place (letting the plastic cover hold it down). Once I have the walls in place, I'll come back to that. For shelving, I'm just going to continue using the PVC, and add fittings right on the walls. Then I can lay plywood across the PCV framework, or maybe find some open grating to use so that water spills just drain into the ground. The idea is to get plants started on the shelves, and then the bigger stuff like tomatoes I can transfer straight into the ground underneath the shelves. More importantly, I can extend the END of the growing season significantly... We usually get one crazy frost for a couple days in October, then it's warm again for another month beyond that. If I can protect my tomatoes from the frost, I'll get a lot more from the plants.
Lots of work still, but I think this will be a really nice setup once I'm finished.
