- It's the beginning of April and I'm hanging out here,
starting seeds in the open air,
which is definitely a luxury.
Most of us are starting our seeds indoors,
or maybe, just maybe, we have a greenhouse,
like our contributor, Chris, up in Vancouver, BC.
Who just gave us the breakdown
a couple videos ago about greenhouses
and now she's gonna take us on a full tour.
So join me, as we head on up to Vancouver
and check out Chris's greenhouse.
- Hey, it's Chris and welcome to my greenhouse.
So today I thought it would be kind of fun
to really introduce you to the space,
because I know it shows up in a lot of the videos,
but I never really talk about what I'm doing in there.
And I never really explained the setup.
So today's goal is to just walk you through
kind of my thought process.
When I first got the greenhouse
and how I went about deciding how to set everything up
so that it works for my gardening needs.
So I bought this kit from BC Greenhouse Builders.
They are a company located not too far from me,
up here in Canada, and they make a whole bunch
of these beautiful greenhouse kits.
This is the Pacific model that they have.
It has this nice, beautiful curved roof,
and it sheds snow and debris quite readily.
So that's pretty handy.
And if you're wondering what this material is,
it is not glass.
It is a plastic material.
This is a twin wall polycarbonate.
And I chose this over glass
because it has better insulating properties.
And it's just, overall, more durable as well.
If you're wondering about the overall footprint
of the greenhouse, this is an 8 by 12 house,
so it's quite manageable, but it still gives me
a lot of space to move around in there.
The greenhouse was installed November of 2020.
So really I just wrapped up
my second winter with this space.
And what can I say?
It's just been filled with learning opportunities
as I switch up the type of plants that I grow in here.
So the first months I had with the greenhouse,
I focused a lot on growing a whole bunch of specialty plants
for the purpose of plant sales.
And although it was beautiful and very rewarding
to have so many plants in here during my first season,
it got overwhelming trying to manage all of that.
So this year, the focus is using it as
just like a general purpose workspace
and also to grow subtropical fruits.
Like back there, I've got some, what is it?
Some mountain papaya, some strawberry guava,
and also all of my hardy citrus
that actually need to go out pretty soon
as the temperatures start warming up in here.
The greenhouse is located at the front of the property
and just north of the house.
Usually that's not a good idea,
especially if it's a taller house
and it can cast shadow on the structure.
You don't want that.
But thankfully, a lot of sun comes in this way,
so I don't have to worry.
But when placing a structure on the property,
you think of it as like a garden bed
where you're growing things like tomatoes that need sun.
So you want it ideally getting 8 to 10 hours of sun,
direct sun coming from the south is ideal.
And the orientation is really important.
You want to have it lengthwise
oriented from east to west, not north and south.
The idea behind east to west is that as the sun arcs,
you're gonna get maximum sun exposure on your bed.
Same idea with the greenhouse.
You want all continuous sun going in there
throughout the day.
Also, when I was trying to find the best place
for the greenhouse, I thought about
the source of electricity and water.
I wanted these things to be kind of close by
so that it's handier and also being close to the house
meant that it was easier for me to dash out
and tend the plants and maybe open vents
if the temperatures got too hot.
Whenever anyone asks, Hey is a greenhouse right for me?
Or, Hey, I have the space,
how do I set it up so that I can use it?
Well, my question to them
is what do you want to grow in there?
And how do you actually see yourself
experiencing your space?
Are you going to be over-wintering somethings,
just for the winter period?
Are you trying to do like season extension
or do you want to grow food in-ground year round?
Because depending on the answer,
the setup is going to look very different.
When I was researching for a greenhouse for my space,
I knew the focus was always going to be
propagation, or starting new plants.
It's just one of my interests.
And I knew that was going to be a focus.
So for me, no open exposed soil beds.
It was going to be a foundation
of like wood around the perimeter
and a base of three quarter crushed gravel,
just something nice and clean and flexible
so that I can install all sorts of workspaces and shelves.
So right here, I have two heavy duty metal shelving units,
three tiers each, and I love them.
Well worth the investment.
I think they were about 150 Canadian each
from a big box store.
And I think they're just gonna last a lifetime.
They hold a lot of weight, which is great,
especially since I put some large containers
that are quite heavy from being well watered on top of here.
Now I could have built a more customized shelf
for myself out of wood, but I opted for metal
because I didn't want so much moisture in the greenhouse
that would lead to potential like rot or algae
or pest and disease issues.
With the wood, depending on what type,
it could hold a lot of moisture.
And I just didn't want to deal with that.
So metal is durable and it's easy to clean
and it's just super strong.
And I think it looks pretty good too.
Now I have them oriented east to west.
So again, to capture all the light.
And I've placed these units on the south side of the house
so that it captures the most light.
So all of my young plants, all of the plants
that need to grow, they go on these shelves.
This work bench here, I built by myself.
This is simply two by four.
And then I have these pretty inexpensive cedar fence boards
that I'm using as slats.
I really wanted cedar as opposed to other wood
because of its ability to withstand breaking down
with all that exposure to the moisture.
So I chose sections that were kind of less expensive.
So I just kind of built to suit these pieces here.
And it worked really well.
And to save more money, I actually increased
the spacing between each slat,
maybe not the most practical
if you are trying to work with smaller containers.
But I use a lot of one gallon containers and also flats,
so I'm not too worried about it.
And then for plotting up activities,
I have this piece of board on top
where I just lay a tarp right on top of that.
And I do all of the messy work there.
So keeps everything really easy to manage.
So nothing fancy, super practical, and not expensive.
I also want to mention that this entire bench
runs east to west, it's like right opposite from the shelf.
And what I'm showing you right here
is how I protect my more tender propagation station
from the scorching sun.
So especially when I'm doing cuttings,
which is a lot more sensitive
than doing things from seeds or division,
this allows me to comfortably put the plants here
and then shade the plants so that they don't dry up
or burn in the intense heat.
So this makes it really practical.
And it adds another layer of functionality
to this simple workspace.
One of my favorite features of the greenhouse
are actually these really simple shelves that I installed
to three of the walls inside the greenhouse.
So this has helped me increase my storage space
by the equivalent of 20 of these standard 10/20 trays.
Instead of taking up bench and workspace
they now live above all of this stuff.
And so it really frees up a lot of space
for other plants or other activities
or at least just keeps the place really clean.
Now these were super easy and pretty inexpensive.
These are L brackets that you would use
to make a shelf for the inside of the house.
And up here, these are just
those inexpensive cedar fence boards.
I just chose ones that suit the space.
So I think altogether, like that was like a few dollars.
And then up here was like another few dollars.
So relatively inexpensive to really help
maximize storage area by doing everything vertically.
So really the goal for this space,
at least the setup, is to keep it nice and simple
and easy to clean because the fewer areas
for pest and disease issues to kind of hide in,
the healthier the plants are going to be.
And that means the overall gardening experience for me
is gonna be a lot more positive.
So I mentioned that I am starting
to play around with subtropicals in here.
I do have some fruit up here and also behind me.
And you may be wondering what temperature
I try to keep the house at.
Now because these are subtropicals,
they don't like to be in temperatures
that dip lower than 10 Celsius or around 50 Fahrenheit.
So I do have my electrical heater right here,
that keeps the house pretty consistently warm,
especially during the cooler nights.
Now last winter, I did add two kind of features
to the greenhouse to try to help better insulate
or keep the house warmer without relying
just on the electric heater.
First, we have this shiny material back here.
So this is the reflective bubble wrap.
Not only does it help with actually just insulating,
the reflective material that I have
mostly on the north side of the wall
helps bounce back the sunlight,
and help keep everything warm inside.
So I have it wrapped around this side right here.
And the other thing that I did was add this piece
of thin board and what that does is prevent
the hot air that comes out of my electrical heater
from going into this unused bench space down there.
So I just store like pots and some other materials
and I don't really need to keep that heated.
So by having this sectioned off,
most of the heat just stays in the area
where I try to keep most of my plants.
Now in the future, if I want to reduce my reliance
on the electrical heater, I'm gonna try to make room
for large dark barrels that I fill with water.
So those essentially capture the heat from the day.
And then as the night time temperatures start to dip,
it will send back out some of that warmth
to keep the overall temperature nice and warm.
As we venture deeper into spring,
I'm really feeling the warmth in here, which is great.
But with any of these structures,
we wanna make sure that there's always
good air flow throughout the space.
Now with these residential sized houses,
they cool via roof vents
because of passive cooling, hot air rises.
So I've got two big vents here
and I also ordered an extra one for the back
to improve the air flow.
So right now I have the door open
and it feels really, really nice.
Now when it gets hotter and I know it will get hotter,
I also have fans positioned to really push the hot air out.
We don't want any of these plants to get overheated
because they can crash really easily.
And trust me, it has happened before.
Last year, we got up to around 42 Celsius,
or just under 110 Fahrenheit, which was super hot.
So that's why this year, I may get an extra fan.
And I'm also going to shop for shade cloth.
Now with 60 to 70% shade cloth
applied to this south part of the greenhouse
it's going to help shade the area
keep it cooler and a bit more tolerable.
Even if I'm not growing plants,
it will at least keep the supplies
that I have stored in here from melting.
I try to keep the greenhouse at around 12 to 28 Celsius
for the things that I grow in here.
So of course, once it gets hotter,
the vents help, opening the door helps,
but I also have a thermostat that controls the fan
and also the heater when it gets colder at night.
So that keeps things pretty well regulated.
Now with the thermostat, I have it hooked up
to my phone app so I can actually control it
from inside or when I'm out and about, which is super handy.
And also, in case the electricity fails for some reason,
I also have this handy Min-Max thermometer.
Super low tech and effective.
The only thing is that I have to reset it
every day to make sure that it does a reading
to capture the highest and the lowest temperature
during that 24 hour period.
So I have been asked if I could improve my greenhouse,
what kind of changes would I make?
And I guess my answer would be just to make it bigger,
because who doesn't want a larger space to grow in?
And also just to enjoy,
like, this is really lovely and I'm loving this.
But the reason why I went with a smaller 8 by 12 footprint
is because with that size, I did not need to get a permit
from my city order to put this structure on my property.
So that's actually kind of the reason why.
But who knows? Maybe in the back garden,
at some point I'll decide
to put a larger greenhouse who knows?
So this has been kind of like the tour
for this sunny greenhouse.
If you have any questions about this kit,
this greenhouse, or my setup, or if I've missed any details,
let us know in the comments below.
And thanks for watching.
We'll see you in the next video.
- I've got a little bit of greenhouse envy
seeing Chris' garden, but there might be a greenhouse
next year here at the Epic Homestead.
Until then, stay tuned, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
(upbeat music)