It sounds like a simple enough question, but when you do ask : What is a greenhouse? – many people would probably give a simple answer like ‘somewhere to grow plants’. And while that’s true on one level, there is much more to a greenhouse than just that.
An appropriate greenhouse is often a judgement on how serious a gardener you are, but if you don’t consider yourself such a thing, then don’t be put off too much – greenhouse gardening is not really much different from gardening outdoors albeit you tend to be able to control the climate and temperature.
There are many benefits to greenhouse gardening and depending on what types of plants or vegetables you want to grow, there are many different ways to use one.
At its most basic level, a greenhouse is somewhere where you can raise and grow plants that will not fare so well if exposed to the outside world. Maybe the weather conditions at certain times of the year are not suitable or they couldn’t survive being exposed to the elements all year round. In addition, greenhouses make excellent nurseries for your plants, where you can plant seeds, raise cuttings and generally control and increase your stock of plants.
A Greenhouse Gives Added Protection To Your Plants
Many popular vegetable plants are sensitive to cold weather and benefit from starting their journey in a greenhouse. Take sweet corn, for example, which needs a long growing season, but it does not like the cold, wet weather of early spring. So you plant the seeds in pots in your greenhouse, and the seedlings will show good growth until late spring comes when the conditions are such that they will survive outside.
Other vegetables and plants, such as tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines, also fare better when sown undercover and then transferred outside in late spring or early summer, or alternatively do just as well if kept in your greenhouse for the entirety of their lifespan. For these plants, the benefit of growing indoors is mostly the warmth, but they are also protected from the elements, which means plants and crops are less likely to be damaged, and the result is higher yields.
And then there are those plants which are never able to grow well in our varying weather conditions. What of those? Well, these are usually the plants that have home countries and normal habitats that are very different to our own. For instance we have diverse plants as orchids, many of which need almost constant warmth and high humidity in order to survive, and alpines, which prefer cooler and drier conditions and dislike water on their leaves in winter and so need protection from wet weather. There are also plenty of others, including cacti and tropical plants of the sort that are often grown as house plants. Although these survive in our houses, that is often all they do. They can be transformed into things of real beauty when they are grown in a greenhouse, bursting into bloom in the more natural light levels and temperatures.
Greenhouses Are Plant Nurseries
When it comes to growing plants from seed then you definitely need a greenhouse. It can be used as both a potting shed and nursery where you can set almost the perfect conditions to ensure your seeds have the best possible start to their lives.
By giving your greenhouse an electricity supply then you can use heated propagators for those seeds or cuttings that need them in addition to employing an electric greenhouse heater when the cold weather arrives, but other seeds will benefit just from the extra protection they get from predators, such as slugs or mice, and of course, the extremes of the weather. Thinning, pricking out and potting up are all easier tasks to be done in one place, too.
Depending on the organizing skills you are blessed with, and how you have arranged your whole garden, you can also use a greenhouse as a staging post for indoor flowering plants. Keep up a continuous display in your house by bringing on the different plants in the greenhouse until they’re ready to bloom, then moving them into prime position in the house, porch or conservatory. Once their bloom has faded, you then have a suitable place in your greenhouse for your plants to ready themselves for their next bloom.
A Final Thought
So now there is no longer any need to ask : What is a greenhouse? Although fundamentally they are just a place to grow plants, when we dig further into the details we see that they are slightly more important than what that simple answer to the question implies.