Should We Buy a Greenhouse?

[whodunit]

There's one for sale in our area that we might be able to get for between $2000 and $2600. It's used, but has everything with it including vents, fans, tables, etc. It's a hoop type (heavy gauge metal tubing) with framed ends. The plastic looks okay but might need to be repaired here ansd there, or maybe even replaced. We're not sure of the exact dimensions, but something like 16'X66' (or possibly 80'). It would take up much of our lot, but we would basically grow everything inside it. The other issue is that it would take half our savings. We have very short seasons here with unexpected late frosts, so we have never been overly successful with our gardens. We already have an old wood stove we could use for heating it. Is our money better used to allow us to be more self-sufficient or sitting in savings waiting for a rainy day?

[Freeholder]

My opinion is that you should keep an emergency savings account, but whatever you have surplus to that should be put into becoming more self-sufficient. However, you can probably build a greenhouse for less than what that one costs. My nephew is building us one for almost nothing, using the frames from a couple of old Costco carports, attached to the south-facing eave of the house. It is almost seven feet deep and about 34' long, not huge, but it will enable us to get plenty of seedlings started, and grow some things inside that don't do well in the garden. Our climate isn't too different from yours, as we are on the east side of the Cascades at 4200' elevation. If anyone is interested in more details on our el cheapo greenhouse, I'll get Travis to take some pictures tomorrow and get them posted.

Kathleen

[TnAndy]

I wouldn't run out and buy it personally, until I had more of a plan on using it, especially if it will eat half your savings. What you may be looking at is a commercial greenhouse used to raise plants for the spring garden/flower season, and that is a WHOLE LOT different operation than you using it for food production.

Take this year, and learn and plan. Study greenhouses.....order every catalog off the net and learn all you can before you ever start. Get the "4 seasons greenhouse" book by that guy up in Maine.....he has it nailed down pat how to RAISE FOOD. Amazon has it HERE

Most likely, the plastic WILL have to be replaced the one you're looking at.......most of them are 4 year plastic, then replace....look into the cost of that first.

IF I were you, as this is for your personal use, I'd start smaller scale. Don't worry so much about heating it either....start by using it as an unheated hoop house to extend your growing season....don't shoot for trying to grow all winter....I've done that over the last two winters in a much smaller version in a much warmer climate, and I'll tell you....I'm going to hoop houses to extend the season on either side of summer, and FORGET trying to have tomatoes in February...too much work....to much heat.....to much humidity/venting problems. 6 weeks after your normal first frost, be planing on shutting it down...except maybe for some real hardy greens..you can do additional row covers inside over them, and maybe get salad greens all winter.

What "I" would do is spent a few hundred on a
"you build" lumber frame ( buy treated lumber ) for a smaller version...say 24x30 or so, set up permanent raised beds for growing in it ( forget the tables...you don't need them for the most part ), and use a design where you can raise the sidewalls open as you get into warmer weather, and forget the fans/shutters for venting. My guess is for for half what you will sink into that greenhouse, you can have a better NEW one (with 4 years on the plastic).

You can raise a HECK of a lot if you simply extend your season 6 weeks on either side of "outside" and that is do-able with a unheated hoophouse.

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

do some research you can build a good hoop house from the top rail of chain link fencing there is a jig you make to bend the hoops youself the the ends are generaly enough for vents.


i have a very small green house , it will be 50 outside and 80 in when the temp gets down aroudn 30 at night i put a colman lantern in there just enough to keep it from freezing

compost compost compost , it can be piled in the corners of hoop houses and along the outside of the walls and that can be enough to extend your season alot grow in the finished compost inside and out of the hoop house plants love

think about blocking of one end of the hoop house to move the chickens into they love the light and with a deep straw bedding they will winter in there and make much of thier own heat from their dropping getting down in the straw and starting it to compost right under them start a few red worms in all that compost the chickens will get some but they will help that compost along and they multiply oh do they multiply a pound will be 10 pounds in months 10 will be a hundred in a few more and 100 will be a thousand before very long so as long as they have a good place to live and plenty of compost to eat if there are a hundred + worms in a pound there will be milions all leaving you black gold for your plants.

[Wolf mom]

And if you build your own solar GH attached to your home, you can utilize winter heat from it to supplememt your home heating........

[Ernie]

There's a lot of better things you could spend your money on. That's pretty expensive for a greenhouse.

My greenhouse is not stellar, but I assembled it for no more than the cost of the nails. I used reclaimed (junk) lumber and a bunch of old windows my neighbor gave me. My wife calls it the green eyesore, but I can use it every year to start plants.

[Roadking]

Personally, unless wife wanted to get back into large scale perrienial propagation again, that's way too much greenhouse.
We are going Ernie's route; neighbor gave us 7 sliding glass doors after replacing them with new, and got 2 more from craigslist. Using 7 for an attached sunroom/greenhouse with thermal mass...complete souther exposure. The other 2 are being made into solar heat collectors with a small PV (5watt) panel and 4 computer fans. I've made 3'x4' ones for testing in certain rooms and had to remove them because the rooms got too hot...the new ones will be roof mounted and ducted in.
Matt

[Harry Chickpea]

DO NOT BUY IT. Greenhouses take a learning curve and starting out too big is a huge mistake. We did that. I was thankful when the wind finally took it down. A small greenhouse or shelving will allow you to get an early start on plants.

[Ernie]

One of the original designs I was going to build was simply a lean-to greenhouse up against the regular house. Then I came across the windfall of 40 or so large windows and built an actual free-standing structure. I wish I'd gone the other route now. This year part of the roof blew off and so I covered the whole thing with plastic tarp weighted down with cinderblocks. That's working so far but it looks like a giant amorphous blob is flapping its way down from the high pasture.

Unless heated, a greenhouse here isn't really suitable for year-round growing. There's about 8 degrees of thermal lag. In other words, during the night I drop down to about 8 degrees above between ambient air temperature. On a sunny day I can soar 20 degrees or more up past the air temperature, which later in the season actually gets too hot for plants.

So my greenhouse is really only viable between the end of March and the middle of May, but that's the only time I need it as I only use it to start plants.

[Blu3duk]

Farmtek Supply has the material to price for recovering a greenhouse, and they have new kits with everything in them too for not much more than what you posted about cost...

yes its a good nvestment, and no it is not a great investment if you have to replace the cover.

you can build a 12x32 [more or less sized] for about $500 in materials including plastic that will last for a couple seasons or more before replacing. Cattle fence panels for the hoops, and build up a 3 foot stud wall, vents in the wall and frame in the ends for fan placement and doors...... at most $750 if you had to buy everything "new" and have it delivered.

Ive been goona publish a booklet on building one for a couple years now, but where we were renting the landlord wouldnt let me out one up even temporary cause he didnt want the city going nuts without a building permit...... yeah we got land use planning that crazy. maybe this summer i will get around to building it and photographing the progress and publishing a pdf of nothing else of the process, i think everyone needs a greenhouse of some sort and a 12 x 30 will grow enough for a family of 4-5 if you stick with it even not using it here from November to February [low lighting, though with the newer LED grow lights using less energy i wonder of that cant be over come].

edited to add link Farm Tek Supply more than just commercial farming supplies, no i dont own any stock in their company.

William
North Central Idaho

[SquashNut]

I have one we made with sliding glass doors, for very little.
I would think you need to deciede what you want to do with it first. Right now we are going on the policy- that if we cann't eat it, we don't need it.

I have a metal school desk with shop lights hanging over it and I produce enough starts for my back yard garden on it. I think I have about a 2000 square foot garden if you don't count the pathes.
It produces all we can eat for the summer and about 300 quarts of food for the winter. If it were me i would start hunting for yard sales and get a canner or dehydrator.
Sounds like you own your place, so you could start tilling it into a garden.
i use the passive wide bed method of gardening. It can be done as a no till garden after the first year.

[fffarmergirl]

Holy cow, that's a huge greenhouse! Can you imagine what it would cost if you tried to heat it? Plus you'd have to water everything - no rain would get to anything. You'd have to make arrangements for pollination - nothing would get wind pollinated unless you had a way to pull up the sides or something.

It's pretty cold where we live & some people are doing hoophouse experiments up here, to extend the growing season. They're using them for late fall/early winter & early spring/late winter but growing in regular gardens the rest of the year. So far, they don't seem very thrilled with the results they've had.

Our little 6'X6' or so greenhouse works fine for starting lots of seedlings. It's surprising how valuable it's been to us.

ETA: I don't know any more about this stuff than any other newbie!

[Sunbee]

Depending on where in Idaho, whodunit's gonna have to water everything anyway, so having to water everything in the greenhouse is irrelevant.
Look for the book by the guy out of Cheyenne that keeps this website http://www.greenhousegarden.com/ and read that five or ten times. We had a smallish one against the side of a house at 7000' when we were in WY, otherwise unheated, made out of scrap plexi-glass, and that kept us growing all the way into October, and we had 30 days frost free there.

[SquashNut]

I use a rain barrel to catch water for the green house.

[Calico Katie]

There are a lot of free greenhouse plans on the internet so you could start out smaller and cheaper until you knew exactly what you wanted. I like the idea of the PVC hoop house but wonder how it would stand up to the wind and spring storms.

http://www.pvcplans.com/

http://www.backyardspaces.com/greenhouse.html

[Callieslamb]

I have recently been researching GHs. Do get Eliot Coleman's book, "The Winter Harvest". He lays it all out for you. There is MUCH you can do with a greenhouse in winter. Just get the plants to size before winter gets really going. Then keep them that way as you harvest. He uses remay over his crops in winter. But as someone else said - it's not about tomatoes in January.

Maybe you can go halvies with someone and buy 1/2 of it? I would research very well for GH in YOUR area. I get a TON of snow every year - a rebar/conduit greenhouse won't do it. We opted for wood because it was cheaper in the long run. We can replace the wood 3x for the cost of the metal hoops.

When I priced a hoop house with a local guy- he quoted me $40/per hoop and about $100 for the plastic (12x16) but when the real quote came, the cost had tripled - the specialty strips you need to attach the plastic to the metal frame cost more than the hoops and anchors. It was $500 for roll up sides. So we opted for wood. I spent about $300 for the wood - we decided on 14x20 and I wish I had gone 30.

Eliot has some moveable GH - they are moved over crops as needed. I am very interested bulding something like that. First you put the lettuces, spinach under them - then, move it and plant tomatoes. When the tomatoes are going, you move it to melons. Then back to cover the tomatoes at the end of the season and so forth. Something like that might also work for you. Less investment but more crops. the plastic isn't terribly expensive so it isn't a worry for us.

[chickenman]

I've built two simple hoop houses with pvc and used lumber. I covered them with greenhouse film from FarmTek. I recently changed the covering on the oldest hoop house. It lasted 5 seasons and I paid $40 for it. The new covering I purchased last year was closer to $60, but still a good deal I thought. Sometimes you can get remnants for a whole lot less from FarmTek. This is the old one. These will take A LOT of wind.

[oregon woodsmok]

You don't have to pay what they are asking. Make an offer. A lot of people don't want to do the work to move them, so they aren't that easy to sell used..

I'd probably buy it if it is tall enough to put some dwarf fruit trees down the middle. I'd sure like to grow some apricots and cherries where the birds couldn't get them.

You can go on line and price kits for green houses, the hoop and plastic kind. The 16 ft doesn't sound very wide, but the 80 ft long sounds good to me.

All that vents and fans and equipment stuff that a greenhouse needs adds up fast.

[Pelenaka]

Hubby built me a cold frame for under $25 about 4 or 5 years ago. I've replaced the plastic cover once. It's 2' or 3' wide & 6' or 7' long.
So far I can say that cold frame has grown over a 2k in fresh gourmet greens. More if I take into account the bartering I did with fancy lettuce.

That said I agree with Oregon Woodsmok, make an offer.
Then I'd see what kind of homesteading income you could make with that greenhouse.
Because after all if your gonna spend that kind of mulah it had better generate some cash flow.

~~ pelenaka ~~

[Spinner]

I would much prefer a home made greenhouse to a commercial one. You can make it the size you want out of the materials you want.

I've seen pics of greenhouses that were 1/2 underground. I think that would save on the cost of plastic/shade cloth since you'd only have to cover the top.