- Every gardener's dream is to be able to grow
whatever they want, anything to their heart's content.
And certainly that's the case for me.
Even though I'm living in San Diego, Zone 10b,
there's still some things I struggle to grow.
Until now.
With the help of the incredible builders
over at BC Greenhouses, I actually have the greenhouse
of my dreams standing right next to me.
And I can't wait to show you what's inside.
But before I do, there's a lot of considerations
that go into where to put a greenhouse,
how to design a greenhouse.
So let's get into that right now.
When thinking about the greenhouse,
I certainly had a lot of opinions and a lot of desires.
I knew I wanted it to be made out of glass
because I liked the look.
I knew I wanted something a little bit more modern,
maybe not a traditional English greenhouse.
I also knew I wanted a relatively simple foundation,
nothing too crazy, no stonework,
no concrete pouring, anything like that.
But that's about all I knew.
So I had to talk to Danny over at BC Greenhouses
to figure out if all of my crazy, weird dreams
could actually be translated into reality.
So the first thing I talked about with Danny
is just sharing my thoughts.
Yeah, let's start with overall size.
I mean, I know from my area, and this is probably important
for anyone considering, you kinda have to consider
your permitted and/or unpermitted structure sort of sizes.
And I know for me, eight foot by 10 foot, I don't need
any permit for, which is basically what we sized this.
- Yeah, we call this a free-standing lean-to,
a shed roof, a single-slope shed roof.
- And then having him tell me how realistic
those thoughts actually were in translating those
into a CAD drawing so I could see the render
of what the greenhouse would look like
in all of the different angles,
playing around with different placements
of vents and heights and dimensions and materials
so that it actually starts coming to life.
After I finally locked the design with Danny,
it went off into production and Rick and Cody,
who are the owners of BC Greenhouse,
they actually were gonna fly down
and install the greenhouse.
However, I needed a foundation set.
An Epic Gardening fan actually hit us up and said,
"Hey, let me come on over and help out.
"I have 17 years of professional grading experience."
And I'm not one to be too proud to ask for help
in a situation like this.
So our friend David came down to give us
some help on the foundation.
My friend David and our team have been putting in
the structure to get this greenhouse ready to receive.
So what did we do here, David?
- Well, we had this falling at a plane
and we had to level it out and balance it
and get some compaction going and get
the base ready for the gravel coming in,
which will be the bottom of the greenhouse.
- Yeah, and we're gonna use these concrete pylons,
place them at the corners, throw some pressure-treated
four by fours down and then some felt to protect it
and then put gravel on top so we have a nice base
that's level for the greenhouse to sit on.
It was really cool to see David do his work
and was super-thankful to him for helping out.
When the greenhouse came in, I was totally stoked.
I could not wait to open it up.
But I didn't want to 'cause I was quite honestly
afraid of damaging something in these amazing wooden boxes.
So the build went something like this.
Rick and Cody showed up and started deconstructing the boxes
and building the frame wall by wall, tall side, small side,
and then the angled sides, standing that up.
And then working with the glazing,
which are the big glass panels, quite thick,
six millimeters, about a quarter of an inch thick,
really, really tough and really what gives
the greenhouse all of its strength.
Once those panels are in, you can't move it around much,
which is exactly what you want.
After that, it was final details,
putting on the exhaust fan, the ventilation,
the louvers, as well as the door.
Although you can build these greenhouses yourself
and many people who purchase do, I'll say this,
it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to let me do it
because after watching Rick and Cody get after it
in about a day or so, I think you wouldn't be seeing
this video for another month or two if it was up to me.
(upbeat music)
- Well, hello, my friends and welcome
to the Epic Greenhouse.
Much to come in this space.
I cannot tell you how excited I am.
It's getting a little windy, getting a little cold.
Come on inside, I'm gonna show you everything
you need to know about this amazing space.
First of all, the second you come in,
you already notice that it is quite a bit warmer in here.
We've already had it for, I don't know,
four or five days now.
And what I've noticed is let's say
it's about 70 degrees outside, it will actually
get up to about a plus 15 degree differential in Fahrenheit.
We've got Celsius up here for you.
But I know that because I have a little
min-max thermometer right here.
So I've just been playing around and seeing
what is the actual differential, what can I grow in here,
and what do I need to do as far as ventilation?
And speaking of, let's go first
to the manual ventilation options.
On this greenhouse, what I decided to do
is have some top vents that are manually controlled
via a roto-crank, which is just a fancy way to say
spin this thing and it's gonna close the window.
So this one's a little bit squeaky right now.
But basically, you can just do that,
twirl it to your heart's content.
So every morning I come out and I just twirl these open
just like that.
And the coolest part, to me at least,
I'll talk about this fan in a second,
are actually these vents down here.
So these vents are screened because they're on the ground
so no predators can come in when they're open.
But these actually open automatically
with this sort of louvered vent structure.
There's some sort of wax inside
that when it's a certain temperature,
it actually expands and it pumps the hydraulic
and actually forces the vent open.
So based on raw conditions,
just the environmental conditions,
that's what's gonna open this vent up.
So you can see it's open right now.
I think somewhere around the 70 to 75 Fahrenheit,
again Celsius on the screen, it will open up.
So you can play around with that.
What's really nice is now I have automatic vents right here.
Not even electrically automatic,
just sort of hydraulically automatic.
Very kinda cool principle of physics here.
You can see it's a little bit empty in here right now,
mostly because I don't quite know exactly
the best way to orient this space.
The first thing I wanna do though is get an electrician in
'cause the main ventilation is actually not hooked up yet.
I have this exhaust fan up top.
You can see the wires hanging right here.
And then there is a vent down here
that is going to be triggered at the same time.
There's actually a thermostat right in here
that once I wire this up, when this thermostat registers
the temperature that I want it to, let's say 75,
this is maybe 85 degrees Fahrenheit,
it will trigger and then it will open that vent
and it will pump this exhaust fan going at the same time.
So fresh air's coming in the bottom, the hottest air,
which of course would be at the top,
is going to be sending it out that way.
It's a pretty strong fan.
So I'm really curious to see how that works in the summer
because as we know here in San Diego, can get pretty warm.
In fact, it's kind of warm in here right now
and we're sitting in late February, early March right now.
So what's actually growing in the greenhouse?
Well, just about everything I can get my hands on,
including probably the weirdest thing,
my very own sourdough starter.
Over on the Epic Homesteading channel,
I've been baking a lot and this is, believe it or not,
my very own sourdough starter.
So I've never really done this much before
but this is the perfect place to actually grow the starter.
It needs a warmer environment for the yeast
to help rise this starter to the point
where I can make my own bread.
I found actually even rising bread in the greenhouse,
believe it or not, kind of a funny thing
but if it works for plants, it's the environment they want,
turns out to be the environment
this sourdough wants as well.
So that's kinda the weirdest thing I've got in here.
But a lot of the more obvious things
are just all of the seedlings that we're growing here
at the homestead right now.
So this is everything we have in line for spring,
as well as a little bit of a taste of summer to come.
But things like peas doing really well,
things like Cherry Belle radishes.
I've got all sorts of different root crops
and Asian greens here.
My girlfriend's actually doing
a bunch of flowers right here.
And we're just kind of messing around
with a lot of different things.
I even have some ginger propagations.
It's really a place where kinda whatever
I wanna grow, I can grow.
And I've moved in some plants that really
wouldn't do well outside, even in San Diego.
This is a coffee plant.
Yes, the plant that grows the bean that has the seed
that is the thing that all of us around the world drink,
coffee, right there, amazing.
Over here, right behind us, is this Blue Java banana,
which I've struggled to grow bananas
in general in San Diego.
I'm hoping maybe in the greenhouse
I can get it off to a better start.
And then over here, what's really nice
about the greenhouse space is there are these rails.
And I can take something like this,
which is just a daisy-chained hanging pot,
and I can suspend 50 pounds per hanger here on these rails.
And all I have to do to get them in and out
is just kind of slide it.
So there's just a little nut here
and you can pop it up in, slide it over like that.
And voila, as long as it's nice and secure,
you can hang 50 pounds on.
So if I really want to, these rails are a function
of every single vertical here.
So I can hang 'em from anywhere here in the space
that I want to and even as you can see,
a pretty big hanging metal pot.
This is actually from Chris at Fluent Garden.
She gave it to me as like a little greenhouse celebration.
This guy is pretty heavy and it's hanging
right above these ceilings.
It's doing totally fine.
So in here, I think what I'll end up doing
is adding a lot more shelving, a lot more hanging pots.
I wanna cram as much as humanly possible in this space,
have it be inviting and lush and productive
because look, I've got eight by 10 square feet
of perfectly-conditioned space.
I might as well make the most of it.
That is the Epic Greenhouse, my friends. Much more to come.
Thanks to BC Greenhouses and Rick and Cody
for coming down for the install.
Stay tuned because there is a ton
of cool stuff, cool plants.
I'm gonna try to grow vanilla beans in here. So subscribe.
Check out our greenhouse playlist.
Check out our greenhouse supplies.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.