building my greenhouse

[pandacular]

I got permission from my landlord to build a greenhouse on an underutilized patch of lawn, and I have my lawyer drafting an addendum to the lease. Once that’s ready, I’ll begin ordering materials and building it out.

Here are some details about my plan so far.

For a base, I plan to cut the lawn very low then cover it with heavy duty weed barrier/ground cover. I will build a frame for the baseboards out of 2 bys. I am taking heavy inspiration from this design:

How to make your own polytunnel

The first step is deciding where you want to possition the tunnel and how big you want to make it. The garden here runs North South with the house at the southern end. A line of tall conifers 35 fe…

patshunts2002.wordpress.com

Because I am renting, I plan to use a semi-permanent, steel frame and greenhouse film style greenhouse. In particular, I’m thinking about building out one of these (and will contact their sales department once I have the first draft of the lease addendum):

Home - FarmTek - Hydroponic Fodder Systems, Farming & Growing Supplies, Hoop Barns, Poultry & Livestock Equipment, High Tunnels, Greenhouses & More

FarmTek offers the best customer service and most economical prices on products for the agricultural industry. Product offerings include farm supplies, aquaponic, poultry supplies, agriculture products, animal housing, home improvement, commercial high tunnels and hoop houses, fodder growing...

www.farmtek.com

It seems that this company has offerings that would convert this frame into a more complete greenhouse, as can be seen in the attached photo.

The siting for this greenhouse will be on an underutilized patch of grass on the northeast corner of my house. It gets a lot of morning and then shade—not really ideal for a greenhouse from my understanding, but it’s the spot that makes sense.

I would be curious to get some thoughts from anyone who has built a greenhouse, particularly in this style. Tagging in @Deep Sea Diver and @JEads, two teachers of mine who are familiar with the local climate as well.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Good project to have fun with. Back in the day played around with a couple manufactured hoop houses, but a massive rain on snow event trashed both. Doubt a well designed hoop house would have issue. Only thing I learned from that debacle was the hoops might need to be a closer together then most plans lay out to give that extra support needed in these cases.

Rain on snow events happen fairly frequently in our area. Some years none, but a couple years ago we had three! One event in which it snowed 10” one day, then turned immediately to rain, proceeding to drop 1/2” that night.

Here’s a Mother Earth article with links to a generic plan etc embedded along with some solid recommendations that might help.

Cheers and keep us posted
DSD sends