Greenhouse gardening provides a controlled and protected environment that offers a multitude of advantages for plant growth and cultivation. Whether you're an avid gardener or a commercial grower, harnessing the benefits of a greenhouse can significantly enhance your gardening experience. In this blog post, we will explore the advantages of growing plants in a greenhouse, ranging from extended growing seasons and climate control to pest management and increased crop yields. Let's dive into the world of greenhouse gardening and discover why it's an excellent investment for plant enthusiasts.
Extended Growing Seasons: One of the primary advantages of a greenhouse is the ability to extend the growing season. By creating a controlled environment, you can start planting earlier in the spring and continue growing later into the fall or even throughout the year. This extension allows you to cultivate a wider variety of plants and enjoy fresh produce or vibrant blooms for an extended period.
Climate Control: Greenhouses provide the opportunity to tailor the growing conditions to suit the specific needs of your plants. With the ability to regulate temperature, humidity, and ventilation, you can create an optimal microclimate that supports healthy plant growth. This control is particularly beneficial in regions with harsh climates or for growing plants that require specific temperature and humidity ranges.
Protection from Extreme Weather: Greenhouses act as a shield, protecting plants from extreme weather conditions such as frost, hail, strong winds, or excessive heat. This protection minimizes the risk of damage to your plants and helps maintain a stable growing environment. It also allows for more consistent plant growth, resulting in healthier and more resilient crops.
Pest and Disease Management: A greenhouse provides a physical barrier against pests and diseases that can wreak havoc on your plants. The enclosed structure prevents insects, birds, and larger animals from accessing your crops, reducing the risk of infestations or damage. Additionally, the controlled environment of a greenhouse makes it easier to implement integrated pest management strategies, minimizing the need for chemical pesticides.
Increased Crop Yields: The controlled environment of a greenhouse creates favorable conditions for plant growth, resulting in increased crop yields. With the ability to optimize light exposure, temperature, and nutrition, plants can thrive and reach their full potential. Greenhouses also allow for better crop planning and organization, maximizing the use of space and resources.
Flexibility in Plant Selection: Greenhouses offer flexibility in plant selection, allowing you to grow a wide range of plant species that may not be suitable for your local climate. You can cultivate exotic plants, tender perennials, or delicate flowers that require specific conditions. This opens up a world of possibilities and expands your gardening repertoire.
Year-Round Gardening and Continuous Harvests: With the control provided by a greenhouse, you can engage in year-round gardening and enjoy a continuous harvest. By staggering planting and utilizing techniques like succession planting, you can ensure a constant supply of fresh produce or beautiful blooms throughout the year.
Ideal for Seed Starting and Propagation: Greenhouses are ideal for seed starting and plant propagation. The protected environment provides the consistent conditions necessary for successful germination and early growth. Seedlings and cuttings can thrive in a greenhouse, resulting in healthier and more vigorous plants for transplanting into outdoor gardens
Though we may be a little bit biased, here at Gothic Arch Greenhouses, we believe that growing in a greenhouse is the best way to ensure success, no matter what your gardening or farming goals. Greenhouses can help you get bigger blooms on your prize-winning flowers. You can harvest more fresh veggies year-round. With a greenhouse, you’ll have fewer pests and disease issues. You can even grow plants that wouldn’t thrive under outdoor conditions in your climate.
If you’re considering a greenhouse, or even if you already have a greenhouse but haven’t yet unlocked its full potential, then read on! We’ve compiled the best reasons to grow in a greenhouse, and we’ll even address a few potential drawbacks (though, really, we think the benefits far outweigh them). We hope we’ll have you growing in a greenhouse the second you finish reading!
Extend Your Growing Season
One of the best reasons for growing in a greenhouse is the potential to extend your growing season. The controlled environment inside a greenhouse keeps air and soil temperatures stable, allowing earlier planting and later harvesting. You can also delay planting, or plant to harvest repeatedly, in cycles.
Stable temperatures cause less stress to the plants and promote strong growth throughout the year. With a greenhouse, you are truly in control of your cycles and growing seasons.
Even in an unheated greenhouse, many greens and vegetables will not only survive the cold, but require a cold period for maximum flavor. Some plants started in fall will not grow much, if at all, when it’s cold. For those cold-hardy varieties, they will continue the growth cycle, even in freezing temperatures, and be ready for harvest when the temperatures rise.
Starting seedlings early in a greenhouse to later move to an outdoor bed will give you a great advantage when planning your gardening calendar. A greenhouse gives a great start to your plants at their most vulnerable stage.
Eating from your greenhouse year-round is a great benefit for growers!
Create a Consistent, Protected Environment
Growing in a greenhouse allows you to create a consistent environment for your plants, safe from weather extremes. Excessive rains, withering heat, sudden frosts or temperature drops, drought, and high winds will not affect your crops.
You can get more consistent results from your crops in a consistent environment. You can also grow plants not native to your climate. As long you understand the ideal conditions your crop requires, a greenhouse allows you to adjust your climate to produce a perfect harvest.
Bigger, more rapid blooms or harvests come with the ability to increase the humidity and temperatures to the levels plants love. Not only can you increase surface transpiration rates, but you’ll also conserve water while doing so!
Catch the Sunshine!
Our Gothic Arch Greenhouses motto is, “Catch the Sunshine!” Growing in a greenhouse truly gives you the ability to capture the sun’s energy, heat, and light spectrum. You can diffuse the harsher, withering summer rays effectively, keeping plants healthy while stimulating growth.
A greenhouse gives you the ability to control light with the use of shade and blackout cloths, so you can also control flowering, seeding, and fruiting cycles of your plants. Proper shading can also help avoid heat stress and burns from powerful summer rays.
Capturing solar heat energy rather than using traditional manufactured heaters is a great greenhouse technique. This involves creating thermal solar mass, using natural materials that readily absorb, store, and release thermal heat.
The powerful, full light spectrum of the sun feeds plants during the photosynthesis process. With proper ventilation plus plenty of sunlight and water, plant growth can be dramatically increased in a greenhouse due to diffused full spectrum light reaching the surface of the leaves.
Protection from Pests
Outdoors, crops are often at the mercy of common insects and other pests. Indoors, it is much easier to manage seasonal pests like caterpillars, locusts, mites, and many more.
Predators like moles, deer, rabbits, and birds won’t be able to eat or attack plants growing in a greenhouse. This reduces the need for toxic pesticides or chemicals, and gives you the advantage of being able to keep a close eye on your plants.
Best Use of Growing Space
Greenhouses allow growers to make excellent use of their available growing space. Planning your planting space in a greenhouse gives the advantage of growing tall along sidewalls, and trellising crops easily. You can grow on multiple levels in-ground and with benches and baskets.
Being able to grow out of season plants also makes your greenhouse a year-round rather than only a seasonal growing space. Rather than having a garden plot that lies dormant half the year, your greenhouse can produce throughout the seasons.
When growing in a greenhouse, you have the added benefit of variety. You can plant anything that you like in it! From vegetables & fruits to flowers & herbs, even cactus and bonsai can grow in harmony. Without planting directly onto your garden soil, many varieties can co-exist easily.
Disadvantages of Growing in a Greenhouse
There are some possible “cons” in a list of many “pros” when deciding on a greenhouse purchase. We’ll discuss a few of those now.
Upfront Cost of a Greenhouse
The primary disadvantage for many people looking into a greenhouse for the first time is upfront cost. A solid, well-built structure that will stand the test of time is an investment, and operating costs for heating, cooling, and air circulation can seem daunting.
The good news is that Gothic Arch Greenhouses has financing options for qualified commercial growers and residential growers alike. A greenhouse can increase your long-term property value, and in the short term can save you money, by supplementing your food stores and reducing your grocery bill, and by saving money on spring plants and decorative landscape items.
Tough economic conditions cause higher costs for vegetables, flowers and fruits. Growing in a greenhouse can provide you and your family with a consistent supply, year round. Many growers recoup their costs on a greenhouse with the savings from planting their own crops within one year or two.
Lack of Know-how
Another consideration is that you may feel you don’t have the know-how to get started with growing in a greenhouse. The cost involved may cause you to feel that it is not justified for a “hobby” level grower to build something substantial and permanent, or you may be a long-time outdoor commercial grower who is not comfortable moving into a more technical growing set up.
A wonderful thing about the gardening and growing community is the willingness to share their knowledge. Modern greenhouses have been in use for hundreds of years, and the wealth of information for tackling most any type of problem is astounding!
How to handle whiteflies, identifying disease early, planning for a particularly harsh winter-- these are questions every gardener faces. Proper air exchange for best plant growth, when and how to add supplemental lighting, and when to add nutrients are similar challenges that are more specific to growing indoors, but all of these are topics which have great solutions online and in gardening publications. You can get more precise advice by calling your local agricultural extension office or your greenhouse supplier. We here at Gothic Arch Greenhouses are always happy to help.
Get Growing in a Greenhouse!
As news of supply chain challenges, farm labor difficulties, and unusual patterns of fresh produce demand have become part of our daily lives, greenhouse growing is getting more and more consideration. From farmers who want the ability to automate their harvest to homesteaders wanting to decrease their dependence on grocery stocks, a greenhouse can help keep a steady supply of healthy nutrients ready for harvest year-round. If you’re ready to plan the best greenhouse for you, get in touch with Gothic Arch Greenhouses today.