In February frosts, when it is still far to spring, and there is snow outside the window, I want fresh greens and vegetables.
Greens from supermarkets often turn out to be treated with chemicals or simply stale, and you will be able to grow yours in the country only in a few months.
But there is a solution, and this is home greenhouse!
Features home designs: the pros and cons
Home greenhouse is a frame made of wood or metal, on which polyethylene film is stretched or glass is inserted, it can be made with your own hands, such a room greenhouse can be used indoors (in an apartment, in a private house) both for indoor plants and for growing seedlings in the winter months.
Greenhouse easy to do it yourself, and its main feature is the small size, which allows you to install the structure on a window sill or on a table.
Of course greenhouse should have a bottomand often - and shelves for installing drawers or pots of seedlings.
The positive features of such greenhouses include:
- Compactness. You can place the building on the balcony, in the room near the window, on the street, on the veranda, etc.
- Mobility. If necessary, the greenhouse can be moved from place to place, dragged into the room at night, if frost or other weather events that are dangerous to the structure or plants are expected.
- Durability. An ordinary greenhouse can last a season or two, and a mini-greenhouse will last ten years or longer.
Such a greenhouse has its disadvantages:
- Spaciousness. The price paid for compact size is the limit on the number of adult plants or seedlings that can be grown in such conditions.
- Design complexity. If a greenhouse can be built by simply sticking the wire arches into the ground and pulling the film on them, then the mini-greenhouse should have doors for plant care and ventilation, the bottom and shelves for pots or boxes.
- Labor costs. On the preparation of materials, calculations and installation of the structure will take more than one day.
What can be grown in an apartment in a greenhouse?
You can grow in such a greenhouse exotic plantsthat need temperatures up to 30 degrees and high humidity (in nature they grow in equatorial forests). These can be orchids, ferns, epiphytes, etc.
It is also possible to grow plants that require high humidity at low temperatures: cyclamen, azalea, selaginella, various predatory plants (sundews, flycatchers).
Can grow and seedlings solanaceous (pepper, tomato) or other plants that need heat (for example, cucumbers).
How to make your own hands at home?
Design
First of all should decide on the project, guided by their needs and capabilities. You can choose one of the options for factory mini-greenhouses, and copy the design. Consider how the greenhouse will open, where boxes or pots with plants will stand, whether the greenhouse will often be moved from place to place (in the latter case, you can make pens or even wheels). Then you should sketch a drawing your future creations.
Preparation of materials
When the project is ready, should proceed with the search (purchase) and preparation of materials. How to make (build) a greenhouse at home (at home), consider the example of two popular projects: greenhouse with metal framecovered with plastic film and greenhouse with wood frame.
Metal frame and plastic film
The frame will be from aluminum or steel tubes and look like a shelf. Boxes or pots are located on the shelves. Metal pipes should be cleaned of rust, if they are steel, you can paint. Aluminum tubes do not need cleaning and painting. Then in the right places are drilled holes for bolts.
Shelves can be made of wood or take ready (for example, from an old refrigerator). To fasten the shelves is best with metal brackets.
If you think that the frame may turn out to be unstable, immediately prepare two identical planks on which the structure will stand (you will have to fix them again with bolts using brackets).
At the next stage, we measure and cut out the required amount of polyethylene film. If it happens that the film needs to be glued together, it can be done with an ordinary iron, putting the film on the rubber and covering it with wax paper on top so that the iron can glue, not burn.
Wooden frame
The easiest option - frame in the form of a rectangular parallelepiped (like an aquarium) of wooden slats with a wooden bottom. For head restraints, they should be rid of metal elements (for example, hammered nails), planed, treated with a wood preservative to prevent rot, because the humidity inside is high and painted. The top face of the box should be made opening, which will require door sheds and a handle.
Each of the faces is the same as in the previous case. will be filled with film. The film is nailed with long wooden slats so that the nails do not tear it. Wishing use glass You will have to work hard additionally, making a frame with grooves for glass, as in wooden window frames, and cutting the glass edges themselves.
Fig. 2. Film greenhouse at home, with a parallelepiped-shaped wooden frame (photo).
It is possible that only the upper edge will be glazed, and the rest of the greenhouse is a low wooden box (see figure).
Fig. 3. A box with an opening glazed lid (step by step production).
Installation
You can mount a mini-greenhouse right inside the house (in the apartment), for this metal carcass bolted, the film is worn on top, like a cover.
For installation timber frame nails or screws are used, and the film is also nailed.
Other options
As an apartment greenhouse you can use already ready aquarium. If there is old window frames, you can hammer a greenhouse out of them, not forgetting to remove the glass before knocking them together with nails.
Fig. 4. The greenhouse in the house of the aquarium (photo).
Self-made wooden frame does not have to be shaped cuboid. He may have a look triangular prism or be executed in the form of "house".
You can also use a ready-made container, for example, plastic barrel. Cut holes in it and cover them with a transparent plastic film - and no installation is required.
Fig. 5. Greenhouse-barrel.
Conclusion
Room mini-greenhouse - an indispensable thing as in an urban setting (for an apartment), and if you have a private house. It can be grown as a strange ornamental plants come from the jungles of the Amazon or Indonesia, and the seedlings of the usual agricultural plants.
No less There may be a variety of materials for such a greenhouse and its very design. So, home greenhouse can be difficult - opening the "house" for plants, and maybe simple - a former aquarium or a barrel for water.
