Quote:
Originally Posted by Lordspudz
Hi all
New here and new to 'growing my own' veggies.
Had some success with my first attempts at growing potatoes and peas and have been severely bitten by the 'homegrown' bug.
I am now considering getting a greenhouse to expand my veg choices and allow for a longer growing season. After trawling through the pages and pages of info on the web about greenhouses, I am even more confused then when I started!
Can someone please enlighten me on a few points?
1 Which is best - horticultural glass, toughened glass or polycarbonate panels?
2 Is it necessary to have a base fitted to the bottom of the 'house'?
3 Can automatically opening vents be fitted to replace manual opening ones without too much alteration?
4 Is it good practice to line the house with insulation such as bubble wrap?
Any help would be very much appreciated.
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1. Depends on your circumstances. Do you have young children or elderly parents who could fall against the glass, for example? Others will explain the differences better than me
2. You need a firm base for the bottom of the greenhouse walls because any movement could cause glass to break. You don't necessarily need to floor the greenhouse - for example you might like to plant things in soil beds rather than in pots or gro-bags. It's useful to have some sort of floor (eg concrete slabs) over bits which you're not going to grow in - easy to sweep clean,, for example.
3.. Yes, and they're well worth having
4. Definitely yes, it you're planning to heat the greenhouse in winter. Presumably also yes if you're not heating it. It cuts down the light level, so best to have some way of easily removing it in spring. I leave the bubble wrap on the side of the greenhouse up to staging level.. Then I have a series of canes strung in parallel lines just below the roof, and I drape bubble foam sheets over these for the winter, which is a relatively easy job.