I don't have a green house yet. But I have been dreaming forever.

The mother earth design or something similar seems right for me. I don, t have a need for a green house till late fall and not after spring. I want to over winter tropical plants. Fifty degree minimum temp. So more insulation in the roof and north wall seems right to me. Keep the heat bill low.

Lots of light after the sun moves south.

I hope to have enough old slideing glass doors, double pane. Glass is the best at keeping the heat in. If not glass I want polly carb. Double glazed.

If you are there all the time to open and close the doors and windows. You might get away without automatic vents. But I am off to work. I think fans are a must.

For my heating system I would like to use a water heater. With a grid of pipes running through a thermal mass on each side and set pots on top of that. With more shelves above. That would leave more space in the middle.I would like bigger than 16x 12. But building cost and heating would be higher.

I tried to figure how I could work in one of the 6x8 kits. But I use that mutch space in the house now. I also don't think I would be comfortable in a space that small and I am not real gracefull.

For some thing that small there is a thing called a pit green house. Google that very crude. But cheep easy to build and less space to heat.But I would only trust it with my most hardy plants.

Another plus. A bigger greenhouse is not as prone to sudden temprature changes.

I am just dreaming though. I have been stock pileing glass doors , styrafoam insulation and a few sheets of plywood though.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mother earth green house

I don't have a greenhouse, but I've certainly been in a lot of them in different parts of the world. They seem to be especially popular in some of the more northern climates, such as found in England and Ireland. Many homes there build what they call conservatories, attached to the house and where a lot of plant growing goes on year round. I know that's not what you had in mind.

I did find that there is a lot of information about building greenhouses of all sorts. I've added only one such site, but you can find more by just googling "building greenhouses."

Bertha

Here is a link that might be useful: Building Greenhouses

Hi Terrance and Bertha!

Believe me, I have googled and searched the Internet for months for greenhouse ideas. Every time I see something I like, I print it. You wouldn't believe the pile of paper I've accumulated! It is amazing how many different ways there are to build a greenhouse!

What I'm really after is hands-on advice from Okie gardeners who have greenhouses, or who are dreaming of having a greenhouse, here in THIS climate.

A lot of what I have found on-line focuses so much on winter temps, which I understand, but I am just as concerned about controlling the temperature in a greenhouse in the spring, summer and fall.

I'd love to build something that I can use year-round as a greenhouse/potting shed, but can't figure out how to keep it from heating up excessively when the sun shines! I have seen a design for a building called a SunShed which has normal insulated walls on the north, east and west sides, with a south wall and south-facing roof that is glass or fiberglass or something. It might work, but I don't know if that one wall and half-roof would let in enough light in winter!

I just want to hear from the Okies with greenhouses in our climate to see what works for them and why.

Terrance, keep on dreaming and accumulating windows and other building materials and you'll have that greenhouse one day! You know, you can always start out with a 12' x 16' one, and extend it later if you want to make it bigger.

We build something here every year. First it was the house and a shed for our lawn mowers, etc. The second year it was a deck, and then a screened-in porch. The third year it was a tornado shelter. The fourth year it was a little chicken coop. The fifth year we built the garage. This year, our sixth year, we're building a bigger chicken coop and, hopefully, a greenhouse. Will it ever end?

Dawn

As you know, we built one this winter/spring. The post is probably still here, back a few pages, with pics. It was just built as a temporary thing as we would be building a new, bigger, better one once we get our new house completed. We are just considering this one a learning experience. All of the parts used to build this one will be recycled and reused in the new one so no $$ wasted.

It is about 6' x 20' roughly, just what fit on our existing deck. Single-wall polycarbonate. One window in each end at the peak with good, strong fans in front of them. They kept the air moving quite nicely in there and do a great job of not letting the temps get too high. Of course, they don't get the temps any lower than what it is outside but they don't let it get higher, either, when running full blast. We have no shade cloth as yet--will be getting some once the new gh is done, though.

No heat in there, either. We had veggie seedlings out there in down to freezing temps, maybe below freezing, a few times. If I was feeling worried, I hauled out a light or two. Carried the babies back inside a few nights, too, when they were little. Never lost anything to the cold. Did lose some to heat (forgot to open windows and/or turn on fans) and forgetting to water. Duh.

Frame is metal. Floor is existing wooden deck slats, which is raised 3-4 feet off of the ground. One long shelf, 3' wide, length of the greenhouse, metal frame with coated chicken wire as the shelf. Back wall of the gh is light-colored metal and the door is there. The rest is the polycarbonate.

Will have to finish this later. Been typin one-handed while holding baby and now she's getting too wriggly.

I'll be back... (said in my best Arnold voice).

Have you gotten information from the OSU Extension Service? Here are some links to their bulletins on greenhouses:

http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/links/linkview3.asp?catnum=123&linknum=4680

http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/links/linkview3.asp?catnum=123&linknum=4679

http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/links/linkview3.asp?catnum=123&linknum=4678

http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/links/linkview3.asp?catnum=123&linknum=4677

You might contact the local Extension agent for any other information too.

Bertha

Dawn,

We first built a 12 X 20' greenhouse. The next year we completely rebuilt it and enlarged it to 12 X 35', and 12' tall at the peak. It's still not even half as large as what I need. So my first bit of advice is to build your greenhouse 2 - 3 times larger than you think you will need.

I wish I had known you were wanting a greenhouse. I went to an auction a couple weeks back, thinking about buying a second greenhouse. This one was 24 X 36' -- a school greenhouse, twinwall polycarbonate, a very nice, heavy duty greenhouse. The polycarb was old and needed to be replaced though. I originally had every intention of buying it. But when the Agriculture teacher removed the ventilation system and the heating system, I decided not to buy it after all. It would have been a PIA to disassemble and then reassemble at my house. Since we are planning to build a new house this fall, I figured we wouldn't have time to build a second greenhouse. The school greenhouse sold for -- ARE YOU READY?? $300. Gosh, what a steal!!

My greenhouse has twinwall polycarbonate panels on each end, and the sides and roof are doubled 6 mm plastic with an inflation fan that keeps a dead air space between the two layers of plastic. The floor is heavy duty landscape fabric covered with 5-6" of pea gravel. There are concrete pavers down the middle of it because the pea gravel is hard to walk on. The frame is steel . It has two ceiling fans and an automatic ventilation system ran off thermostats. I have another large fan in it for air circulation. I love my ceiling fans but I don't feel they provide nearly enough air circulation. It has an alarm that will sound in the house if the temps drop below 42* in the winter.

I use two radiant propane heaters, and have two electric heaters for back up. On the nights the temps fell into the single digits, I used all four heaters. Some nights I needed no heat and some nights I used one electric and/or one propane heater. To be quite honest, I hate the propane heaters. I may break down next winter and buy a regular greenhouse heater rather than using the radiant heaters. I also had a backup "Mr. Heater" in case of emergencies, but fortunately never needed it.

The thing I like the least about my greenhouse is the width. Twelve feet wide is absolutely too narrow for me. There is a lot of wasted space down the middle of it. If it were two extra feet wider I could have tables down the middle instead of only on the sides. I think 14' or 18' wide would have been a nice width for it.

I mainly use my greenhouse for growing tropicals. I actually didn't keep it warm enough last winter to keep the banana plants happy though. The banana plants I stored dormant in the cellar were better off than the ones in the greenhouse. I made a lot of mistakes last winter. Not getting shade cloth on the greenhouse soon enough was my biggest mistake. I believe I needed shade cloth on it all winter, and I burned many of my plants from the intense sunlight.

Much of your greenhouse knowledge will be trial and error. I've found greenhouse owners in other states and information in books I've read don't really apply to Oklahoma greenhouse gardeners. I believe our sunlight intensity during the winter months is probably stronger than many states have. I certainly never needed any supplemental lightening. I needed SUNGLASSES and shade cloth, LOL. I thought I was a pretty good gardener, but found in my greenhouse, I wasn't nearly as smart as I had thought. I had problems with assorted bugs, which was new to me. What I thought would be the most difficult, keeping it warm enough, was actually my least problem.

There are several people on this forum who have much more experience and much larger greenhouses than I have. I will tell you though that you will LOVE- LOVE- LOVE having a greenhouse. I spent so much time in mine last winter. My DH hooked up some outdoor speakers in it so I had music, and I'd put on 5 CDs in the house and stay outside in the greenhouse all day, fiddling with my plants and listening to good music. I didn't have room enough for a pond like I wanted, but I used cattle sweet lick tubs and grew tropical aquatics in them, and had a few fish. It could be below freezing outside, and be toasty warm in the greenhouse. I rarely ever needed to heat it during the day, but used the ventilation system to draw in some cooler air. Every night I told my DH THANK YOU for building me a little paradise to escape from winter. He never tired of hearing it. :-) The greenhouse made winter so much more pleasurable for me.

Good luck building your greenhouse. You will LOVE it. If I can help you with any ideas, don't hesitate to ask.

I have a double walled plastic hoop house very similar to Dawns. Its a 21Â wide x 12Â tall Expansion Mansion. You buy it in a kit according to the length you want in 6Â sections. My greenhouse is 72Â long. I bought a decent sized one hoping to make a living as a contract grower down the road. If I need more space I can add to the existing frame by length or by width.

Dawn brings up a good point about width. 21Â seems to work very well for me. I can have 2 - 8Â benches with a 4Â central walkway. That makes it easy to roll my cart in and out of the greenhouse.

I have 2 shop heaters, 100,000 and a 75,000 BTU, for heat running on propane. They shoot the air into a jet flow system. Jet flow is a centrally located 18" round perforated plastic tube that evenly distributes the air over the length of the greenhouse. The jet flow has a panel for outside access you can open to pull fresh air from outside to help cool the greenhouse when heaters are not in use.

I have 2 - 36" exhaust fans running on thermostats to pull air out of the greenhouse. I keep shadecloth on the greenhouse year round, but donÂt use the greenhouse after April. ItÂs silly to me to pay to keep a greenhouse cool when you can just move everything outside and shut it down for the summer.

DawnÂs smart to have an alarm. That is something I need to purchase along with a generator for backup power.

Most greenhouses donÂt have two heaters, but to me itÂs a no brainer. I want a backup that will kick in if something happens to the main heater. I have too much invested to have that happen.

We have on average very sunny winters, so you need to have a good ventilation system. It can quickly get very hot in a greenhouse if the sun is out on a cold day.

Dawn is right about loving that tropical experience in mid winter when itÂs 30 degrees outside on a sunny day and youÂre in the greenhouse wearing shorts and a tee shirt.

Figure out what it costs and then add 30%. YouÂll be close to what the actual investment is. Wood screws, self-tapping metal screws, and the wood framing on the ends added up to more than I anticipated.

randy

Sorry Dawna! I didnt proofread my document very well. I dropped youre a.

randy

No problem, Randy. A "Dawna" writing to a "Dawn" can be pretty confusing. I sometimes add the "a" to her name out of habit. :-)

I am glad you chimed in here. I know you have a lot of experience with greenhouses, and your greenhouse plants look SOOO much better than mine. I'm hoping I do better with more experience. I will do some research on your heating system. Mine was a bust last year (but it did keep my plants from freezing, even though I was unhappy with it).

Another person I hope will chime in here is CactusPaul. He has a lot of experience with greenhouses and could give Dawn some good advice.

Dawna

Diane, Dawna & Randy:

Thanks so much for sharing your greenhouse knowledge and experiences with me.

OwieBrain: When that precious baby finally lets you get back onto the computer, will you tell me what you'll do differently when you build the permanent greenhouse after the house you're building is finished?

Dawna: Well, wish I'd known about the greenhouse auction too! That's the breaks! Thanks for describing your greenhouse so well. From your description, I felt I could really picture it! You and Randy both made me realize that I needed to go wider than I was originally planning. And thanks a lot for telling me that peagravel is hard to walk on. I had no idea! And, there is no way on this earth I am going to tell my DH just how much time you spend in your greenhouse....even though I am sure I'll spend just as much in mine! I wouldn't want him to think of it as "gaining a greenhouse and losing a wife...." lol lol lol So, where are y'all going to build in the fall? In the same area where you are now?

Randy,

I think I'd give my left arm to have a greenhouse as large as yours...but then, I'm not planning to make a living with mine, so guess it wouldn't be necessary for it to be that large! I love that yours is expandable. Also, thanks a lot for the description of the heating system...it is an area that has baffled me the most. The Jet Flow system sounds amazing! And the advice on estimating costs is so helpful. Since we've built the mega-garage/barn and the new chicken coop lately, we've gotten pretty good at estimating what it will cost us...and we know it always costs more than you think it will!

Last week I was reading a newspaper article about my favorite regional gardening expert--Texas horticulturalist, writer/publisher and radio show host Neil Sperry. In they article they mentioned two facts that amazed me: (1) after THIRTY YEARS he believes his home landscape is "coming along" and he just about has it the way he wants it. That reminded me that home landscaping is a long-term project and I need to be patient! (2) His greenhouse is 30' wide by 60'long! Can you imagine having all that space? I am sure I'll never have a greenhouse that big, but it is fun to think about it, isn't it?

With a son in college and with us writing that college some big tuition and dorm payments every semester, my greenhouse may have to start out small to medium and grow over the years, after he finishes college and all that. I do think I will start out larger than I originally planned, though, as wider seems better. I am learning so much from this thread. Hope those of you who have greenhouses will continue to educate me!

Thanks!

Dawn

Ah, she's finally laying down snoozing so I have a free hand or two!

The new greenhouse will be attached to the front of the new house. The new house will be made of concrete blocks so will act as a heat sink/resevoir--that will be the back wall of the greenhouse. I'm hoping that will keep it above freezing. It's not like we live in Wisconsin, ya know? There will be a door from the greenhouse directly into the house so, if needed, I can leave that open for a little extra house heat to get into the greenhouse in winter, too. The house is earthbermed so hopefully, that will help with the cooling of the greenhouse at least a tiny bit (wishful thinking here ;-) ).

I'll be using shadecloth on the new one for hot days. Will also have more venting and fans.

The new one will be bigger but I'm not yet sure how big. That depends on how things lay out with the house and grading in front of it. I'm thinking, though, that it will be about 12' wide (from house to front) and 30-40' long, attached to the house along one long side.

Can't remember what else I was going to say now. LOL

Hi Owie!

Can't wait to see the new greenhouse after the house is done. Have y'all made any progress on the house lately or does "real life" keep getting in the way?

Glad to hear the lovely babe decided to snooze for a while and give her mom a break!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Dawn

I don't have one but the orchids are taking over the house and I've put a lot of thought into it. :)

One of the main things I would do is sink it down about three feet in the ground. The insulation of the earth would be good for both heating and cooling value. Plus you'd be able to use 'standard' sized walls and with the added depth, have a taller greenhouse in the end. I've also thought about making a wall around the hole to raise the overall height even more.

Since the amount of light seems to never be an issue in Oklahoma (except for having too much), i would make the north wall out of concrete, black concrete. The black would absorb more heat during the day. I would also have a water feature along the back wall to act as yet another heat sink.

I would want the shape to be pyramidal...but very tall. That way there wouldn't be a lot of 'air space' at the top for heat to gather. A good vent at the top would be crucial. Another plus to the semi burried scheme would be that cool air sinks, so if there is more vertical space, the area along the floor would be cooler then otherwise. There are a a LOT of orchids we could never grow here because of the heat...so a lot of my ideas are related to ways to keep a greenhouse cool. A swamp cooler is obvious but I've even thought a window unit AC could be used occasionally...not so much to keep it cool during the day, but to drop the temps more at night in the summer.

I would want to go with triple walled poly for the insulation value. Mainly to help with heating costs in the winter. I also think a water heater with some type of radiant dispersion device would be the way to go, with an electric for backup.

I would want to design into the thing, a way to collect as much rainwater as possible. Maybe even a cistern burried nearby...but at the least some big barrels or tanks connected to some gutters off the roof. In a perfect world, I would have solar panels to heat the water for the heater in the winter and to create electricity for fans, etc.

My backyard is full of Oaks so one of my biggest fears would be building it and then losing it in an ice storm or large T-storm from a tree landing on it. Also if I ever wanted to sell the house, I'm not sure anyone would want such a crazy thing in the backyard! :) I wouldn't want anything smaller then 20' x 20'. Maybe 15' x 30'...or...20' x 40'. Hell, who am I kidding??? What i want is about 200' x 800' and about fifty feet tall. :)

A friend put his greenhouse where it would trap escaping dryer exhaust, allowing the heat to help heat his greenhouse. Don't know whether that's good or bad. Could you build it flush with the south side of your home and have the residual heat from the house help heat it?

Oklahawg,

Wish I could build it flush with the south side of the house, but that side of our east-facing Victorian-style house has a big wrap-around porch surrounded by a mixed border of trees/shrubs designed to eventually shade that side of the house, with perennials and groundcovers under them.

The greenhouse has a couple of potential sites. One would be east of (in front of, but not too close to) the house. The advantage to this site is that it could sit under the shade of a large pecan tree, and would be shaded in summer months. The downside is that pecans are brittle and limbs come down every now and then. Since our house sits 300 feet back from the road, and our best soil lies between the house and the road, I already have a substantial veggie garden surrounded by a perennial/annual flower/herb border in the sunnier part of that area. So, I could put the greenhouse between the house and the garden (where it would have summer shade), or between the garden and the road, where it would have no shade. Either way, you won't be able to see it from the house due to the trees/shrubs planted in the "front yard".

The second potential site would be quite a ways west of the house, where we could build it with the longest walls having a southern exposure. It would be great in the cool months, but the greenhouse would be roasting hot in the summer. The large garage/barn would sit south of it and block the wind somewhat, but we could build the greenhouse far enough away from the garage/barn that its shadow wouldn't block the winter sun.

There are lots of other potential locations on our 14 acres, but I want to keep it as close as possible to the house, so that running water and power to it will be affordable!

Thanks for all of y'alls suggestions! Keep 'em coming. I'm still planning and dreaming....and now that it is getting hot, I'm asking myself...."do we want to spend the hot days building this thing?" Well, guess we could work on it in the cool early morning hours.

Dawn

Hi Dawn:
I just recently got connected to the web and have really enjoyed reading this forum. Hope all this heat hasn't stopped your building and dreaming. I'm hoping someone can give me some insight into having a passive solar GH with the North and East walls built into the bank.

We were thinking this would be a good idea and before we really thought it through we had a track hoe out here digging out the bank and also leveling up a spot for a fire ring, fixing an old terrace to correct a drainage problem and pulling out big ol cedar trees. Did I mention that then the daughter comes and tells us she wants to get married in the back yard next summer? The back yard is alot of dirt piles at the moment.

I am mainly interested in overwintering catainers, so I don't need alot of heat, hoping to use passive solar with heater as back up. Hoping that fans and vents will be enough to control overheating.

RSM is concerned about needing drainage for the runoff from watering ect. The floor area has been cut down to hard clay and rock - no dirt. Cement block walls on North and East, glass on South and West, size is 15' X 20'.
What angle for south facing glazing is best here, or do we get enough sun it doesn't matter.

I may need to go to another forum for this, however, we are also interested in using a large pond for lawn irrigation. Hope someone can give us some direction on this. Thanks for listening.

Aunt Net

I'm not in Oklahoma now, but used to live near Duncan, so have had the experience of Okie gardening.

We built our greenhouse on the North side of a tree, so that we would have shade in late spring and summer. I will admit that the tree was already in place and large.

We have beds instead of benches because we wanted to be able to grow winter veggies (here in MO). We laid hot water lines in sand under hardware cloth wire and then topped with planting medium. It is only used when temps drop really low since we are growing low light salad type greens...lettuce, spinach, onions, etc. A floating row cover to hold in temp from soil will keep these plants from frost damage even though the house itself is unheated. Also comes in handy for propagation in winter...just sink the pots to the rim over those hot water lines. An in-line pump circulates the water in a closed system from a little travel trailor water heater. It is on a timer so it comes on every 20 minutes or so when the temp drops down to teens and lower. The soil is kept at around 60*.

I switch to growing bedding plants and veggie plants for the garden in late winter/early spring and then close it down for summer.