DIY, LOW COST, MULTIPURPOSE GREENHOUSES
Use recycled materials to create an affordable garden greenhouse so you can enjoy fresh food all year long!
On a blustery winter day, what could be better than spending time picking fresh greens in a warm greenhouse?
Greenhouses can be used for more than starting seedlings. With the right design and proper management, your greenhouse can easily produce food year-round. (See Expert Advice for Greenhouse Growing.)
And a “greenhouse” can easily serve multiple purposes. If you want your greenhouse to double as a workshop or studio, include large roof overhangs on the south side to shade the windows in summer (or cover glass areas with heavy shade cloth).
Need a guesthouse from time to time? Make your building taller and install a sleeping loft. (See Build a Greenhouse: The Amazing, Low-cost, Multipurpose, Solar-heated Greenhouse/Guesthouse.)
The key to making a DIY greenhouse affordable is working with recycled windows and/or glass doors. Thousands of these items are thrown away each year as homeowners remodel. Locate your glass first, then design your greenhouse frame around it. Most communities have a few salvage yards that handle windows, or you can call companies that install new windows. They’re likely to have a supply of cheap — or even free — windows.
To find salvaged materials in your area, check auctions, garage sales, freecycle.org, craigslist.com or a Habitat ReStore.
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A CLASSY GREENHOUSE FROM RECYCLED GLASS
I start almost all my vegetables from seeds and propagate roses and other ornamentals from cuttings. My yard is full of plants that came from other plants. I am a Texas Master Gardener, as is my wife, Loraine. I’m also certified as a plant propagation specialist by Texas A&M University, and I teach propagation at the extension office in Houston.
I built this greenhouse myself, from recycled windows and doors. It took me four months to construct it.
Most of the windows were recycled from the Peach Tree Bed and Breakfast in Fredericksburg, Texas. The other windows came from a friend who remodeled his home. I decided to wait to design the greenhouse until after I had purchased all the windows and doors so that I could design around the dimensions of the materials.
The foundation slab allows water to drain through the center and into the flower beds that surround the greenhouse. The plants are watered by misters or drip irrigators controlled by a timer. I heat the greenhouse if the temperature gets below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. During the summer, I open the windows for ventilation.
— Brian Koehl
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A GIFT GREENHOUSE
It all started with an ugly aluminum shed
with broken doors — an antique eyesore from our friend Ed Hannity’s
childhood days. Now that Ed is 58 years old, it was time for a new,
improved structure — a greenhouse for gardening and a workshop to call
his own.
Ed’s time is consumed by his job and doing things for other people. My husband, Bob, and I are home designers, so we decided to build a greenhouse for Ed — hoping to surprise him. We built the structure at our house, disassembled it and delivered it on a car trailer to Ed’s house. We used recycled materials as much as possible, and found many materials online at low cost or for free. After friends and relatives learned what we were planning, it seemed everyone had some sort of building material they were thrilled to get rid of.
The workbench counter is made from a solid-core door. Driving home one night, we spotted a stack of short 2-by-4s. We beveled the edges for the potting bench and lower shelf. Bob even had various nails and screws left over from past projects.
The toolshed area keeps everything in order and within reach. The greenhouse portion and potting bench create a great space to nurture new plants and to overwinter hanging baskets. It’s convenient, and a pleasant place to spend time. We also saved many materials from ending up in the landfill.
- Robin Anderson
AN EFFICIENT LEAN-TO GREENHOUSE
We wanted a greenhouse to extend our growing season, but never felt we could justify the use of electricity for winter growing. Now that we have constructed a lean-to greenhouse, we feel we have the best of both worlds.
Lean-to greenhouses make use of the insulated wall of an existing building. Because we’re at 40 degrees latitude in Ohio, the 60-degree slant of the south-facing wall allows the low winter sun to pass directly through the tempered, insulated glass and bounce off the white interior walls. This results in maximum light and warmth for the plants. Allowing sunlight to reach the back wall is an important consideration in lean-to greenhouse design.
December and January are the cloudiest months in Ohio, and it’s important to store any heat the sun provides during this time. Water-filled plastic jugs, painted black, are lined up along the back wall to absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Two 50-gallon water-filled barrels, also painted black, absorb and release heat over a longer period of time.
Air movement is essential in any greenhouse. We rely mainly on air currents provided by screened windows with automatic openers.
A sunny, winter day in the teens will heat the greenhouse into the 80s by mid-morning. The heat-retaining containers cushion the cold night temperatures. If nights dip below freezing, cold-tolerant plants still thrive. We can start seedlings in February, protect melons and zucchini from vine-borers in the summer, and continue growing tomatoes into late autumn. We enjoy being able to extend our growing season without increasing our energy use.
— Mary Lou Shaw
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MAKE SKEETERS SCARCE
So what’s going on? The current line of thinking goes like this: Ever-shrinking bird habitat plus unusually warm, dry spring weather forces birds and mosquitoes to share the same watering places. The mosquitoes pick up the virus from the birds, and when it finally rains, thousands of infected mosquitoes reproduce and start biting people, horses and other birds. By late summer, an outbreak of West Nile virus is in full swing.
The good news is that overall human/animal cases of West Nile virus have declined since 2006, which many researchers think is due to widespread vaccination of horses, the mammals most commonly infected with the virus. Vaccines for horses have been available since 2002, but clinical trials of human vaccines are still three years away. However, many people, birds and horses bitten by infected mosquitoes develop immunity without getting sick, which over time may further suppress outbreaks.
Besides covering up when outdoors and using a good repellant, the best way to protect yourself from possible infection is to eliminate the sources of standing water that mosquitoes need to breed, or to make such sources uninhabitable to mosquitoes. You can drill drainage holes in old tires, but for rain barrels, water troughs or small ponds, the best solution is to use a product containing Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti). The active ingredient in Bti products is a naturally-occurring bacterium often found in damp leaf litter. It damages the guts of mosquito larvae and kills them. Under most conditions, Bti kills the larvae and remains effective for about 30 days. Used correctly, Bti is nontoxic to mammals, birds, fish and most other insects. Commonly used Bti products are Summit’s Mosquito Dunks (see photo, above), and Vectobac, which is used by cities such as New York and Fort Collins, Colo.
To track the geographical spread of West Nile, check out this series of maps (created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
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Every year we hear about a breakthrough in solar
electricity — usually a new solar cell with a very high efficiency
rating. Knowing that new PV technologies are on the horizon, many
people ask us if they should wait a bit before they invest in a solar
electric system. Does it make sense to delay your installation until
the new, more efficient PV technologies hit the market?
This is a fair question, but the answer is no.
Newer, more efficient PVs are certainly on their way, however, one of the key considerations when installing a PV system is not the efficiency of the PV modules, but the cost of the modules based on the installed capacity. Those of us in the business refer to this as the cost per watt of installed capacity.
An even better measure is the cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by a PV system array over its lifetime. What you’ll find when comparing modules by these parameters is that new technologies, while more efficient, typically cost more per watt of installed capacity. A 2 kW system that utilizes the most efficient modules on the market, for instance, may cost 10 to 30 percent more to purchase than a 2 kW system that uses slightly less efficient modules. Yet both arrays produce the same amount of electricity. Why pay more to produce the same amount of electricity?
In some cases, though, a higher installation cost actually results in a lower cost of kilowatt-hour of electricity over the life of the system. PV modules fitted with micro-inverters, that is, small inverters mounted on each module, for instance, may cost more per watt installed capacity, however, the increase in efficiency may result in a lower cost per kilowatt-hour. So, if you are considering a solar electric system be sure to analyze your decision using both cost per watt installed capacity and cost per kilowatt-hour over the lifetime of the system. A competent installer should be able to do this for you.
Even if efficiency doesn’t result in greater output, it is an important consideration if space is limited. If meeting your electrical needs requires a 3 kW PV system, and the only place with good solar access you have to mount the modules is on a small garage roof, you may need to install the more efficient — and expensive —modules.
While conversion efficiency may not matter to you, efficiency is driving the market and over the long haul will result in more efficient and hopefully less expensive modules. Those companies that can produce higher efficiency modules at a lower cost with less raw material in an environmentally friendly manner stand to make billions.
Above: These bifacial PV modules from Sanyo can absorb solar energy reflecting off the light-colored roof to generate electricity from the backside, boosting module efficiency. Photo from Dan Chiras.
All articles courtesy of motherearthnews.com