Greenhouse for tomatoes
Growing tomatoes in greenhouse is exceptionally productive. The structure protects plants against the cold and pests, ensuring a beautiful and fertile harvest.
Choosing a place
If you want to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse, you should first find a suitable location for it in your garden. Important thing to consider is the size of the structure and its position in relation to the sun.
The greenhouse should have a minimum area of 10 m2, and its longer side should face the east-west axis to obtain the greatest possible sunlight. Otherwise, the crops will not be satisfactory. The gap between structure and the plot border should be no less than 1m.
The topography is important. Greenhouse should be build in a place where there is no standing water after rainfall. It can be placed in a higher ground or you should think about drainage.
The surface should be as flat and even as possible. It is equally important what the substrate is in a given place, and specifically whether it is permeable enough. The best substrate in this case is sand and gravel soils.
Ground preparation
If the ground on which you are going to build a greenhouse is not flat enough, you should level it. There are two reasons why you should have greenhouse on level ground:
- On a sloppy ground all nutrients will wash out
- Stability of structure
Soil
Of course, proper ground formation is not everything. In order to be able to successively run a greenhouse, you should take care of the soil in it. In this case, you should plan adapt the soil to the specific vegetables and plants that you will grow.
For this purpose, you can buy one of the many available soil or mix the top layer of the substrate with additional ingredients to adjust the acidity of the soil. In the case of vegetables, a good solution is to use special mats that are suitable for annual, two-year or multi-year cultivation.
You cannot forget about the appropriate fertilization of the land when cultivating specific species of vegetables and plants, so that it does not become sterile, and thus stops bearing fruit.
You should replace soil in greenhouse regularly. It will force plants to grow more efficiently and will keep risk of diease and pest at low level.
The best soil for a greenhouse is compost or all-purpose soil.
Foundations
How to make a garden greenhouse? You should start with making the foundations. All this for the structure you create to gain adequate stability. Of course, the sense of creating foundations depends primarily on the greenhouse area.
If it is small, only poles and plates hammered into the ground can act as stabilizers. However, if the greenhouse is larger and heavier, you should make a traditional screed for it. The above-ground part can be of concrete, brick or hollow bricks.
Construction
A garden greenhouse for tomatoes may have a structure made of aluminum, steel, wood or plastic. Aluminum structural elements are durable and corrosion-resistant and are perfect for the construction of small and medium-sized home greenhouses.
Steel elements that are more durable than aluminum ones are perfect for the construction of large greenhouses. Steel is the most frequent building material for greenhouses. Due to the fact that it can easily join together in various ways – by means of bolts, rivets or welding.
The biggest disadvantage of steel is its high thermal conductivity. Wooden elements are mainly suitable for creating small greenhouses. Unlike steel, they have a low thermal conductivity and at the same time have a natural appearance, ideally suited to a garden space.
However, they are not very durable, and if they are thicker – they shade the plants. The best is oak and larch.
An alternative are plastic construction elements that are durable, flexible and have a low thermal conductivity. However, they are relatively expensive, as are those made of aluminum.
When creating a structure, you cannot forget about ceiling and walls. You can put on acrylic, chamber or polycarbonate plates. The construction of the roof is equally important and here the most recommended solution is to combine straight walls with a sloping roof.
It will extend the room and make it easier to move around the greenhouse. This solution also has another advantage – during the winter, there will be no snow on the roof, which will fall onto the ground outside the greenhouse.
Do you know that…?
DIY greenhouses can be build from old windows, if they are of good quality. conect them tightly and fill each of the openings with silicone. If building a greenhouse is too difficult or you do not want to invest in it you can replace it with a foil tunnel, which will not be as resistant, but will allow for similar cultivation conditions.
Equipment
The erection of the walls and the roof is of course not all. You should also remember about the interior of the greenhouse, and more specifically about what accessories to equip it with. It cannot lack shelves on which you can put tools, watering cans and preparations, and hooks on which you can attach flower pots.
In the case of small greenhouses, racks made of aluminum are perfect, especially if the frame of our structure is made of the same material. To make the use of the greenhouse for tomatoes as comfortable as possible, you can equip the windows with a special opening mechanism, which will facilitate the ventilation.
Cultivation
If the greenhouse is not heated, you will have to wait until April for the appearance of seedlings in the new season. At the beginning of February, however, it is worth preparing seedlings by sowing vegetable and flower seeds into pots.
Before you even start running a greenhouse, it is worth planning the sequence of crops. If you plan to grow vegetables in a greenhouse, remember that they do not like to grow again in the same place, and thus – you’ll get much lower yields than you could expect.
The use of appropriate spacing between plants also affects the quality of the yield. Remember that you should not plant them too densely. It will take away their access to light, including food from the ground. There is also a risk that they will not develop roots and that they will be attacked by fungi, molds and pests.
Do you know that…?
In the greenhouse, it is worth planting herbs that scare away pests and protect plants from diseases. These include sage, thyme, savory, dill, nasturtium, chives, lavender, and basil.
