So You Want A Greenhouse (What I Wish I'd Known)

We've had this double walled Harbor Freight greenhouse for 10 years. Here's what I wish I had understood when I built my first greenhouse, along with a few additional tips.
My blog on the same subject, with links to how to reinforce this structure: milesawayfarmww.com/2021/04/1...

[@pang-ngiavang1956]

Thank you for sharing.

[@christineshotton824]

🌹You've done an amazing job. Clearly you have a green thumb. Great information on what to look out for. My husband wants to build our greenhouse, he's grown up in the trades. We found a nice design with easy build. I'm in AZ, heavy summer winds, we have those great haboob dust storms, extremely hot summers, and desert winter days and nights get very cold. We used the green anti-frost blankets at Ace. It saved many of our outdoor plants. We rarely had to uncover our Apple tree which is 3 yrs old, grown from seed. Our Rosemary and Honeysuckle, 1year old plants propagated from two year old plants did very well with the green Ace anti-frost blankets. We added straw around the base. We should've covered the banana tree, although it's growing back already at 8 inches tall. TRULY appreciate the time you took to present this video. You might think about laying flagstone pavers around the outside for heat and charm. Thank you.🎉

[@bedardpelchat]

The water barrels are a neat idea but perhaps you could roll them with double-bubble insolation when there is no sun. You could also have double-bubble all around the greenhouse walls. It's four feet wide or high. It will help.

[@nancythomas2602]

We built our Harbor Freight greenhouse last June. Very Happy to enjoy your 10 year review. I think I will buy a couple sheets of polycarbonate and store them in the barn for the future.

[@michaelweaver1188]

Hey thank you for this info. I'm in New Zealand and have been considering a glasshouse for a while now. We get so many people just giving away windows form houses on facebook, even double-glazed. I was thinking there's got to be a way of utilizing and recycling these into a glasshouse. Thanks again.

[@thedude7319]

Regarding if you ever want a different greenhouse, why not use thermal mass in the form of water. the reason why I suggest this is you can add a copper coil to it for the colder days and use embers/open fire to heat this water. so the fire heats the environment within the greenhouse and then the water gets heated as well and causing a longer heating period so you need less fuel (wood). Drawbacks, is cost, you need enough space to do it safely, and it is a big set-up

[@cookingtheharvest]

I've actually had similar thoughts. Adding an aquarium heater to the 55 gallon water barrels. Honestly the greenhouse (10 x 12) is too small for open fire heating (I've looked at doing rocket mass heaters as well). My main reason for replacing this greenhouse would be wanting something larger and more sturdy. The never ending worry about wind and snow load on this one is substantial, and it costs a lot to replace panels every year as the UV ages them out.

[@jerseygalk1554]

Question is the box fan for ventilation or seedling strength? I needed this video, thanks.

[@cookingtheharvest]

It's a bit of ventilation, especially if I have a heater on at night (heat raises, so it pushes it back down) but mostly for seedling strength. Moving air, in general, is really important in a greenhouse.