Greenhouses - The Indoor Way To Enjoy Your Gardening

There is nothing to beat gardening as a hobby. It gives you a gentle workout whenever you need it. There is always plenty to get on with to keep you fit; Digging, Weeding, and Pruning. It is also an unrivalled stress and tension reliever. Not only will gardening make you live longer, it will make you look younger and keep you healthier.

Gardening as a hobby is available to everyone. If you are confined to a wheelchair, then raised beds will let you grow and tend plants. Highly scented, or brightly coloured plants can make it an enjoyable jobby for those with fading eyesight. With a Greenhouse, you can enjoy the hobby all year round, and even in bad weather.

Watching a tomato grow from seed, and then savouring the taste of your own grown produce can not be beaten. Think about the satisfaction of sinking your teeth into an apple picked from a tree that you have raised from a cutting. Whilst you can do all this without a greenhouse, it is so much better with your own greenhouse. By learning how to build your own greenhouse, you will have even more satisfaction

With a greenhouse you should have a pest and disease-free, controlled environment. Making it much easier to raise plants from seed. In temperate and cold climates it also allows you to grow plants you would not otherwise be able to grow, such as tropical flowers and melons and grapes. With some planning, it will give you vegetables throughout the year.

Keeping a greenhouse free from pests and diseases is of the paramount importance. There is nothing worse that have a cucumber growing beautifully one day, looking forward to harvesting it in three days time, then coming back the next day to find it totally decimated by virus or mould. Prevention is always better than cure and there are some things which will help to prevent most greenhouse problems.

First is scrupulous cleanliness. If you see damaged plant material, such as a leaf with a dirty white or grey mould; pick it off immediately and burn it. If you have used secateurs to cut off the material, then dip them in disinfectant before using them on another plant, otherwise you could just spread the mould around. Sounds simple, but many people forget this and worry that the mould is indemic.

Many problems can be simply solved just by improving ventilation. A higher humidity will also help with attacks of red spider mites although this could cause other problems. There are also parasiitic mites which you can also introduce which will cure this problem.

It is always a mistake to quickly add heavy chemical controls to solve pests and diseases. Many chemicals will transfer into the fruit and veg you are growing, and can cause health problems. Organic and Biological controls are generally to be favoured. Often something really simple such as a grease coates yellow card hung up in the greenhouse will solve a problem.(This is actually a cure  for whitefly, which is attracted by the colour and sticks to it. A less messy way of curing white fly, however is to introduce biological control in the form of a parasitic wasp.

But don’t be deterred from greenhouse gardening by pest and disease problems. Most people who have greenhouses experience very little in the way of problems, and those they do have are minor enough to be easily cured with very little intervention.
You can even live with some pests rather than intervening, unless of course the maximum amount of cropping matters to you.