[Food] Production - Greenhouses

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

Well it is interesting to look at building an earth box. I would probably just buy a bunch, depending upon my available time and finances.

As far as growing inside homes, I will sometime probably within the next month show how any household contains most of the buidling materials in home. But I would recommend buying extra mirrors, plastic planter pots and the long planters, along with a large store of seeds, soil and much more ready to use mulch. Also I consider mineral rich additives to be of great importance, as the un-natural farming methods were shown as early as the 1930's to be lacking in food production with good mineral content. We've been eating depleted vegetable (and meats?) food for decades.

This part needs to be addressed. Minerals for the soil and the food it produces. Google and otherwise research it. Get the wide variety of minerals back into the soil, which has been leached out by bad practices.

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

Well do and learn. Now I know perlite is what was needed for indoors growing.

http://www.schundler.com/using.htm

Less than 2 months at it, and I'm setting up for maximum growing... experimenting still, but some perlite goes into every planter now - especially having transplanted some out and looking at the soggy oxegen-starved stuff in the pot. Plus it is volcanic material - probably contains a good mix of minerals.

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

Eeks! I don't know how this is all going to work out, but I keep on this apartment bio-intensive growing thing, and though I used largely free materials, most anyone can access, I do buy pots, perlite, mirrors and some peat moss - I keep buying more and more than my imagination can think possible for use.

I still keep coming up with designs that if I weren't limited to materials I pulled out for free, would... I seem to be headed towards a design product for 2 window situations - something I may submit for manufacturing by wood product / furniture manufacturer locally, if big finances come thru. I'm also thinking I'm nuts pursuing this to the maximum... either that or my something in my spirit knows this has to be done or else.

I know now that I have no essential need to move from apartment. I have plans to purchase would be natural wooded lots set for houses that I think not a one will be built. For me to use for green houses though - only 1/3 or less mile away - easy walk. Also I can rent a garage for storage.

I dare not look in the plentiful overflowing dumpsters, because I have the policy of waste not, want not, and also the yoga philosophy of being satisfied with whatever comes to one. Therefore, I save and find a use for anything I have grabbed. It alway seems to appear. But I'm approaching maximum. I'm not hungry and don't eat much and I'm going to have to sell or give away produce and other stuff. It all keeps multiplying on me.

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

OK, I take a break and do the math. It will not be possible in a couple of months for others to duplicate my bio-intensive designs, in full. But it can be done in part, maybe 1/3 (?) of the production I can achieve.

For a 1 bedroom apartment, facing south (in northern central US), with sliding window doors and bedroom 4x4' window, about 200 square feet of mirrors are required - about 50 door sized cheapo mirrors from Walmart is about $300. In a couple of months this will be near impossible to obtain or afford. To get the remaining 30-35 mirrors, I call Walmart and tell them I have a project, so replenish your inventory by 35 mirrors + whatever you want in stock for normal use.

Not do-able by the average person, as I cleared the local Walmart out of several items, including boxed up, yet-to-be put out stuff. If you are a bit ahead of the curve, you need that mirror stuff most for intensive growing, along with peat moss and perlite. Next in importance are planting plastic pots and long planters. The rest you can scrounge up from discarded-by-others stuff.

For most, apparently, who do implement when seen to be needed, it will be barely getting by. But 1/3 production is better than nothing.

lateStarter

I'll be starting on my greenhouse later in the year after I get the garden in for this summer. I have scavenged 30-40 sets of double planed glass in various sizes just from my neighborhood in Warsaw. I could easily fill a warehouse with all the windows set out for trash from the older block houses as people upgrade to more energy efficient windows. Note: I may actuallt do this if I can convince a neighbot in the village we are building in to let me use her barn for this purpose.

I am at the moment planning on building a greenhouse about 4x6m (13x20 sq ft). After seeing how heavy the glass and wood frames are, I am thinking about using some sort of clear plastic for the roof, Lighter on the south side, darker on the north. Thanks for all the ideas about insulating the north wall and putting some black water barrels alomg the north wall. I also like the compost idea.... I have enough scrap wood to build the frame.

As I mentioned in the general Gardening thread, I currently have an unfinished sunroom that I will be using this year as a green house to get things started.

peace..

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

From my couple months experience (engineering oriented guy), I would say for green house and indoor growing, if I was limited to buying one thing and making do with scrounging up the rest, I would stock up heavily on Perlite. Bright white, it is really the most useful stuff you can find.

Uses include very necessary aeration of soil. 1/2" on top of planters or beds greatly reflects sunlight to underside of leaves, expanding what plants do with sunlight conversion. Added to compost, aerates naturally without much need for labor of turning stuff over.

I look at all of the pots and planters I bought and the structures for indoor growing I came up with (pretty successful designs I think), and there is no reason pots expense couldn't have been eliminated and beds constructed instead out of recovered free materials.

I know from previous light gardening experience, for fertilizer, if you can get any fish and maybe cut into 1/3's, bury them 1/2 or 1 foot deep and anything planted on that will grow like the dickens.

Mirrors is second item for indoor growing. So I could have done better building bed structures instead of spending a couple hundred on plastic pots. Well, I experiment and learn. Pictures coming soon. Bedroom structure 2.5 feet by 8 feet is total success, as however I did it, that growing space is always brighter than outdoors. It glows.

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

OK, I fooled around with indoor planted plants for 2.5 months. It took me a couple monhs to figure out what is super-ideal for plants in such a situation. I transplanted a few bean and tomato plants that were planted and grew under very bad conditions. They seem to be permanently stunted and doomed. Seeds planted a couple weeks ago are higher, even though in new growth seedling form than the ones that were screwed.

My feeling is a plant that didn't start out in the first month or two in good conditions is permantly screwed and needs to be plucked and replace with a new seedling.

Anyone have this experience?

Pops

spear

I didnt get the greenhouse up last year as was planned since there were other priorities.
But after the bird turd epidemic in my winter garden and all my lettuce and spinach going to waste,I have decided that its definately going up this spring.
My original plan was to make one big greenhouse 40 or 50 meters long but I have decided to relocate the greenhouse area and make a few smaller ones with the same total sq footage.

The materials for the frame was an issue,but after much contemplation I have chosen to use thermoplastic water pipe with rebar on the inside to reinforce it and go with a hoop shape.
The frame will be held together with Ts and it will look something like this.

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Now I can also take advantage of the space between the green houses.

The size of the greenhouses according to the new plan will be 15x5m.
There will eventually be five of these,but this year I will probably put up only two,and then add on yearly.

So even though this project was put off,in the long run it seems it worked out for the best.
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mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

This indoor crap I designed and built is ONLY useful during fall-winter-spring. In summer it is useless, for my far north location, as sun is too high in the sky for this crud to work. But that should be normal outdoor growing season, or greenhouse season.

I tell you, with the perlite/peat/woodmulch/soil combo, the 2 week new seed growth exceeds the previous 2.5 month screwed plants in height, noticeably. The soil deal is the deal, along with plenty of sunlight or such like.

Looking at pH ideal and all that, per plant type. Either maximize or die off in the... bad conditions a-coming. Wished I had started a year earlier for the learning curve. Just couldn't get it going til now.

skyemoor

Pops

I read once about using dual-pane replacement French door glass since it is a standard size and so mass produced and about the cheapest new glass available – still too rich for me though I expect!

I’m doing a remodel similar to your ide on our old garage-cum-greenhouse. Replace the south and some of the east wall with poly, replace the south-facing slope of the gable roof with poly, fur out and insulate the north slope of the roof as well as the north and west wall with 10” (R-22?) insulation, line the north wall with 55 gal drums of water.

Of course, as in all of me projects, I’m only a quarter of the way there. But I have maybe 4 dzn 6-packs a-growing with the help of a heating mat so at least it is functional.
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WisJim

We used a non-standard size insulated glass, even though we had planned to use a standard replacement size glass for sliding patio doors (if I recall correctly they are 34 by 76 inches and 46 by 76, but I may be off). I got a non-standard size because I got a pallet of it at an auction for much less than I had planned to pay, and have enough left to redo the entire structure.

I think that insulated (patio door) glass is worth using, inspite of the cost, because of the potential long life. Maybe hundreds of years? if not physically broken.

I would use vertical glass in the south wall with NO tilt unless you want peak heat in the green house in late spring or summer instead of winter. Almost anywhere in temperate climates (probably anyplace you would want a greenhouse), vertical glass admits the most solar energy in mid winter, as it is closer to perpendicular to the the sun's rays, and reflects less of the light. As the sun rises in the sky, more light is reflected from the glass as the angle of the sun's rays increases. With a modest roof overhang, it is possible to almost completely shade the south facing glass in mid summer, reducing the heating effect in the greenhouse, making it a more usable space in the summer. Ours is probably hottest now (late March through April), and then as the sun is higher in the sky, there is some shading of the glass and the greenhouse cools down as there is little direct sun shining in it. Hope that makes sense.

spear

For an economical dual wall solution one can use double nylon.A lot of the commercial greenhouses are set up that way here.
Also in a sunny winter climate area,a solar air heater or two will do a lot.
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skyemoor