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Growing Fruit And Veg In A Cold Greenhouse

It is not difficult to produce high quality fruit and veg in a cold greenhouse, in fact you can even produce crops that would normally be restricted to much warmer climates, such as cucumbers,melons,tomatoes,chillis and peppers. The shelter provided by the cold greenhouses provide a long enough (and warm enough) season to successfully grow and ripen these vegetables and fruits. 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. Some, however, like grape vines may exclude light during summer. This should not be a problem, since during summer you are often shading the greenhouse to keep it cooler.

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. You will only end up with leggy, soft plants which will be open to attack from pests and diseases.

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. You will save the task of thinning out in your vegetable beds, and will also vave no gaps due to poor germination.

The cold greenhouse is great for raising flower plants from seed. This is an inexpensive way to provide both indoor plants (such as coleus) as well as bedding plants for your garden. 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.