Benefits of adding a greenhouse to your home

Thanks to some creative engineering and low cost materials, the ability for every homeowner to have smaller, more budget friendly greenhouses is now available to anyone with a backyard or patio.

In this post, we’ll cover 8 benefits of having a greenhouse for the amateur home gardener.

A lot of plants like like tomatoes work best when you transplant a seedling instead of a seed. The reason is that tomatoes require a long growing cycle, and they don’t do well with cold weather.

As such many people will start tomato seeds in a greenhouse and then sell off the seedlings. For people who don’t have an indoor, climate controlled environment, they will need to transplant the seedling.

My mom is an avid gardener, and every year she pays $1.25 for each of her tomato seedlings. She could get the seeds effectively for free, but she has nothing to do with them since she doesn’t have a green home.

Vegetables can be grown year around with a greenhouse. There will only be certain vegetables that can grow in the winter colder months, but there are still plants that can be grown even when it is snowing and cold out.

The greenhouse will trap the heat from the sun, and it will keep the plants inside safe from being buried or coming in contact with the freezing rain directly. You may need to broom off the roof of the greenhouse to make sure that sunlight can still get through, but having a greenhouse with some gardening skills will mean that you’ll always have the option to have some type of produce.

Another perk to greenhouses extending the growing season is that produce can be planted far later than normal. This ensures that you can have corn, tomatoes, peas far later in the year than the other people around you that are just planting in the ground.

One of my friends from high school has a fairly large greenhouse. He is constantly growing produce and seedlings in it that he sells at the local farmer’s market. Given that it’s a small rural area, he is often the first last person to have fresh cucumbers, corn, peppers and other vegetables.

He doesn’t try to compete the the bigger farmers in the area. They can always under cut him because they are operating at a much larger scale. One the other hand, he has items at times when they don’t. Additionally, he has a monopoly on some items that can’t be grown outdoors in his area.

The climate controlled greenhouse has the ability to grow some subtropical plants Plants such as lemon, lime and papaya are items that can be grown in his greenhouse that simply wouldn’t survive the cold winters.

His greenhouse never gets below 50 degrees as he has a heater in the winter which means he can safely grow plants that the larger farmers cannot. While the colder winter temperatures do slow the plants causing them to go dormant for months, the do survive the cooler weather to come back year after year.

With a greenhouse you can control the temperature, water levels and humidity. You can also create some shaded areas if you need to control the sunlight as well.

Having access to all these options gives you the best opportunity to have a bumper crop.

When growing outdoors, you are at the mercy of the weather. You can always water your plants more, but if you get a monsoon or other large rainstorm the outdoor plants can get overwatered.

My uncle has a large garden, and he uses it for nearly all his vegetables. Over the years, he’s had small greenhouses on his property to start seeds early to maximize the output of his garden.

After the harvests, his wife cans the fruits and vegetables to eat throughout the year. This all allows them to buy very little produce at any point of the year.

A greenhouse makes a great winter getaway where you can get sun without getting cold. You can use a greenroom as a sunroom if you put a chair or two in the corner.

Many people enjoy reading a book or watching a movie on their tablet in while surrounded by their plants during the winter.

Anyone who has done a lot of gardening know that whenever you bring your plants in for the winter, that there always seem to be a bug infestation a few weeks later.

I always assumed this is because the bugs lay eggs in the soil and around the plants. Outside they just fly away and we never really pay attention to them; however, when the plants are inside they have no easy method of escape and we feel like we’ve gotten an invasion.

By keeping your plants in a greenhouse, there will be less bugs to ever reach them so there simply won’t be the eggs on the plants in the first place. Also, the number of plants you need to bring inside is far less and maybe none.

That’s our top 8 benefits of having a greenhouse for your home. Whether you go with a large walk in greenhouse that can hold hundreds of plants or a small one made of plastic tubing and PVC covering a greenhouse can be a great way to increase your ability to grow.

It’s far easier to succeed at fruits and vegetables when you can set the exact environment you want. Also, this is a great way to share the love of gardening with your children or grandchildren.