One of the spring problems that is familiar to many summer residents: there is not enough space on the windowsills to accommodate all the seedlings. Moreover, at first, the pots with seedlings still somehow fit in the designated areas, creating the illusion that”everything is under control”. But as time goes on, the containers where the seeds were stratified are removed from the refrigerator, and small seedlings develop into full-fledged seedlings, requiring more and more space. What to do?
Refuse to grow your favorite plants and interesting new products do not want, so we begin to build all sorts of shelves, almost to the ceiling to hang seedlings. Familiar?
My friend a couple of years ago found a way out of this situation — I borrowed the idea from her, somewhat improving it under my own conditions.
Prehistory
A friend lives in a two-story wooden house in the city, and right under the Windows (the apartment is located on the 1st floor), she has a small front garden. Neighbors do not claim this territory, and every year in the summer she plants flowers and even tomatoes in pots and boxes, because the soil is poor. For tomatoes, in fact, the simplest greenhouse was built: metal arcs and cellophane stretched on top.
And next spring, when seedlings of flowers and vegetables were ready to capture all the housing, pushing from his owners, desperate girlfriend “evicted” the most cold-resistant and hardened plants in the greenhouse, after a few days holding him under cover to the air inside thoroughly warmed.
It was early spring, and it was still quite cool. However, the seedlings in such conditions felt great — even better than at home, where it is hot and the air is quite dry (despite the spraying), and light even under fluorescent lamps is not enough. Last year, a friend repeated the experience, and this spring is going to plant some plants directly in the ground. In the greenhouse, a “pillow” of organic waste has already been formed, which will give both heat and nutrition.
Building a spring greenhouse for seedlings
I have very little space on the windowsills, and you can not put anything special there: the cat jumps on them — admires the birds. Therefore, taking into account the certainly interesting and useful experience of a friend, I decided to build something similar at home-fortunately, there is enough space. For the future greenhouse, I chose a place behind the house: this area is illuminated by the sun all day.
The soil is poor, and moreover thoroughly overgrown not only with perennial weeds, but also with young shrubs. There is no way to improve all this right now, so we need to neutralize the wild vegetation so that it does not appear in the future greenhouse. The decision is black polyethylene, which covers the entire area of the construction.
Polyethylene will simultaneously suppress the growth of weeds and accumulate heat, which is not superfluous at this time of year. Dark plastic water bottles should also serve as an additional heat storage device.
I spread polythene a few days ago to warm the soil a little: when my “construction work” started, we still had snow around. When the top layer of the earth thawed a little, I installed the usual greenhouse arcs.
I do not need a high greenhouse — it is designed for low — growing seedlings-but the strength of the structure will not hurt: we have frequent and strong winds. It is not yet possible to install wooden supports — the soil has not warmed enough to properly bury them and make them reliable and stable. Therefore, we chose the option with a strong nylon cord: we fasten the installed arcs together and stretch them on metal pegs.
If one row is not enough, you can always make additional ones, but you do not want to complicate the design yet — crossbars will make it less convenient to care for seedlings. But the thermometer is a mandatory detail: it will help to control the temperature in the greenhouse, so that you know exactly when to ventilate the shelter, and when to put additional protection from the cold.
Well, that’s it, basically. We cover the structure with spanbond (polyethylene in this case, of course, would be better — but we have this week promise strong night frosts, and polyethylene does not like low temperatures, so we do so for now. Spunbond will play the role of additional shelter in case of severe cold; it will again be replaced by polyethylene when it warms, to prevent overheating of the seedlings.
Leave a Reply