How to Heat a Greenhouse

    7Savings Gardens provides Gardeners like you with information on ways to grow items in a greenhouse. You can get an early start on your planting season or extend your planting season by a month or two.

    There are so many different types of greenhouses that we cannot get into every detail about them now but the main purpose of a green house is to be able to control the environment where the plants grow.

Some greenhouses are temporary while others are permanent. Greenhouses can let you grow tender or delicate plants you might not otherwise be able to grow. I use my greenhouse to start seeds early. there are to reasons for that.

1. planting my seeds and having seedlings means I don’t have to go to the store and buy seedlings. that saves me a lot of money. the cost of one seedling will cover the cost of buying a packet of seeds.
2. Starting my seedlings early means I am able to have my seedlings early  and plant them early there by starting to plant or transplant as soon as I can without waiting to buy it from my local garden center or farmer market (That is if they get the seedlings on time and in other cases they might not even have what you want). 

 

 

The greenhouse also helps me extend my growing season by at least a month or two and that is a great deal in terms of getting more vegetable for the family to enjoy especially during the winter months. (I freeze my vegetables so we have it during the winter months).

How to Heat your Greenhouse

The first and most important part to maintain a certain temperature in the greenhouse is to make sure that the greenhouse is sealed. because if it is not properly sealed all your efforts are going to be wasted and you will spend a lot of money and get little or nothing in return.

The second thing to so is to insulate the greenhouse. any form of insulation  will go a long way to help you achieve your goal. you can use plastic or bubble wrap to cover the greenhouse (expensive option but most advantageous) or cover the individual shelves in the greenhouse.

The next step is to find a way to conserve heat from during the day and release it at night and that is where you need to get gallons of water, the bigger the container, the better, you can paint the container black so that it absorbs more heat from the sun and also helps prevent the water from changing color and growing other things inside. fill all the containers with water. during the day the container with water absorbs heat from the sun and at night the water slowly release the heat and helps maintain the temperature in the greenhouse.  right now I have mostly one and five gallon containers, I am looking for one or two 50 gallon container to use so that it holds a lot more heat and help minimize any heating cost.

Here in New England the water solution is great most days in the fall but some nights require more than just a little heat from the water tanks or jugs. that is where we came to the last solution which is a back up heater.

The heater is there to help maintain the temperature in the greenhouse just in case you have those very cold nights where the temperature drops below 40 degrees.

If you are using small bottles and jugs, put them around your plants as shown on the picture on the left.  the heat they container release protect the plants from frost and cold weather.