Greenhouse Gardening For Everyone

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Gardening is one of the best hobbies I know. It gives you a gentle workout whenever you need it. There is always plenty to get on with to keep you fit; Digging, Weeding, and Pruning. For stress relief, you can’t do much better. Not only will gardening make you live longer, it will make you look younger and keep you healthier.

Whats more gardening can be a hobby for anyone. With raised beds, even those in wheelchairs are able to plant, sow, and harvest their crops. Even if you cannot see well, then brightly coloured flowers with loads of scent will help. With a Greenhouse, you can enjoy the hobby all year round, and even in bad weather.

Watching a tomato grow from seed, and then savouring the taste of your own grown produce can not be beaten. Think about the satisfaction of sinking your teeth into an apple picked from a tree that you have raised from a cutting. Whilst you can do all this without a greenhouse, it is so much better with your own greenhouse. You will get even more satisfaction by building your own greenhouse

A greenhouse gives you a controlled environment, which should be free from pests and deseases. Therefore, raising plants from seeds is much easier. In temperate and cold climates it also allows you to grow plants you would not otherwise be able to grow, such as tropical flowers and melons and grapes. With some planning, it will give you vegetables throughout the year.

The most important aspect of greenhouse gardening is to keep the house free of pests and diseases. There is nothing worse that have a cucumber growing beautifully one day, looking forward to harvesting it in three days time, then coming back the next day to find it totally decimated by virus or mould. There are a number of simple preventative measures that will help you to avoid that bad experience with greenhouse problems. Remember, prevention is better than cure.

First is scrupulous cleanliness. If you see damaged plant material, such as a leaf with a dirty white or grey mould; pick it off immediately and burn it. If you have used secateurs to cut off the material, then dip them in disinfectant before using them on another plant, otherwise you could just spread the mould around. Many people think that the mold problem they have is endemic, when in fact it is often being spread by the very tools they are using to remove it.

Good ventilation will help prevent a great many of the problems.Humidity control is also greatly beneficial to controlling some greenhouse problems. There are also parasiitic mites which you can also introduce which will cure this problem.

It is always a mistake to quickly add heavy chemical controls to solve pests and diseases. Many chemicals will transfer into the fruit and veg you are growing, and can cause health problems. Always look for organic or biological controls. Often something really simple such as a grease coates yellow card hung up in the greenhouse will solve a problem.(This is actually a cure  for whitefly, which is attracted by the colour and sticks to it. A less messy way of curing white fly, however is to introduce biological control in the form of a parasitic wasp.

Don’t let all this talk of pests and diseases put you off greenhouse gardening. Most people who have greenhouses experience very little in the way of problems, and those they do have are minor enough to be easily cured with very little intervention.
Unless you are aiming at achieving absolut maximum crops, you can usually just accept a few loses to pests and disease, and just live with the pests naturally.