Extend Your Garden Season By 4 Months For Under $10!
If you live in a climate where you have a very short growing season due to the cold weather, you might want to consider extending your gardening season by building a mini greenhouse!
A mini greenhouse can be built in under 10 minutes and for less than $10.00! Wow, I know…kind of crazy right?
You can extend your growing season by up to 4 months longer by building this simple mini greenhouse. Are you ready to get started?
Here Is What You Need To Build A Mini Greenhouse
So lets build a mini greenhouse shall we? Here is what you will need to get started.
- 1/2-inch PVC pipe (they are sold in 10 foot pieces). Depending on the size of your garden/raised bed, you will need one of these for every 3-4 feet. These cost roughly 1.50 a piece. For this garden bed, I needed to buy 2 – 10′ pieces.
- cement pavers – you will need about one every 2-3 feet. These will cost you about $.30 cents a piece.
- Twine or green garden twine
- 3 Mil Clear Plastic Sheeting large enough to cover your bed.
- Handheld HackSaw to cut the pipes. You can also have your home improvement center cut them for free.
Building A Mini Greenhouse in 5 Easy Steps!
Step 1 ~ The first thing you want to do is saw the PVC pipes to 8 feet long.
Step 2 ~ Next put the PVC pipe into the soil and bend it to the other side, diagonally to the other side. PVC piping is very flexible. This will make a dome like shape. Note: If your soil is still frozen, learn how to warm your soil up for early planting in this post.
Step 3 ~ Use some twine to wrap around the center of the mini greenhouse. This will help it stay up on really windy days.
Here is what it will look like once it is in the soil. Simply go from one corner to the other corner and connect at the middle.
Step 4 ~ Drape your plastic over the PVC creating a dome like structure.
Step 5 ~ Place cement pavers or bricks around the perimeter of the bed securely holding the plastic down. You should place enough bricks around the mini greenhouse so that cool air stays out and the air in the hoop house stays in to create the proper humidity.
This is what the final product will look like. Easy right? Now you can start growing produce up to 4 months early with this mini greenhouse!
make sure the wood is not pressure treated as all those nasty chemicals will `leech` into your growing things
I’m going to line mine with plastic
My yard this year at our home we are renting in Colorado seems to be mostly sand. I was wondering if you might know if it is okay to set up my raised vegetable garden beds over the sand. Will the vegetables still grow, or should I start digging?
Also, what are some good winter seeds to sew directly, and which ones can I start indoors?
Yes it is ok to raise the beds above compacted sand. It is hard to answer your question about the seeds for your area without knowing where your area is and what the temperatures are?