How To Make A Greenhouse For Seedlings

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

A warm greenhouse on the site will free the window sills from overloading with seedlings

It is known that not every summer resident or gardener has the necessary conditions for growing vegetable seedlings (cucumbers, cabbage, zucchini) and flower (aquilegia, viola, carnation, forget-me-not) crops in their apartment. Therefore, in order to accelerate the fruiting or flowering period of such crops, seedlings, as well as cuttings, are grown directly on plots in special nursery greenhouses.

Unfortunately, as practice shows, due to the lack of recommendations in the literature on the creation of dung-free nurseries, the existing ones on the plots now often poorly or at all do not justify the hopes placed on them.

My analysis of hotbeds, nurseries, which I happened to see in summer cottages, showed that when creating them, two main mistakes are most often made, aggravated by the absence of manure as biofuel.

The first of them, which is the most characteristic, is that the nursery is arranged right in the garden soil. Usually, they first dig a pit in it, while excessively deepening it, regardless of the high level of groundwater and melt water. Although it often happens that after digging a pit and filling it with organic matter and soil, it is dry at first in the nursery, and after it settles and begins to work, water comes up, which arises after thawing of the near-wall earth. Both in the first and in the other cases, the nursery becomes dead, and the plants in it refuse to live.

The second mistake of many summer residents and gardeners is that the greenhouse-nursery is made in the form of a wooden box, hammered together from boards and resting on four pillars at the corners. This is motivated by the fact that in this way you can get away from the frozen ground and not bend over when growing seedlings in it. Unfortunately, judging by the reviews of a number of summer residents and gardeners, disappointments are not uncommon in this case. Their reason is most often that such a hotbed in the early spring period is very often caught by the night cold, and especially strongly if the walls are thin, and the layer of organic matter in it is less than 15-20 cm. I myself once had such a hotbed, and I more than once it was necessary to observe that at an outside air temperature of 8 … 12 ° C, plants in it, heated from below with a layer of decomposing organic matter 30-40 cm thick, felt much better than at a temperature of 15 … 18 ° C,being above organic matter of lesser thickness.

Greenhouse-nursery scheme

1 - utility block wall;

2 - a frame made of pencils;

3 - roofing felt pad;

4 - frame stand-support;

5 - earth bedding;

6 - folding glass frame;

7 - metal loop;

8 - organic waste and additives;

9 - fertile soil;

10 - seedlings.

Taking into account all these errors, four years ago I created an improved greenhouse-nursery on the site (see figure), which differs from those discussed above in the following:

• the nursery is placed against the wall and is semi-recessed; its base is located above the level of groundwater and melt water, due to which flooding of organic matter is excluded and additional heat is provided for the soil and seedlings;
• the walls of the nursery frame are made not of expensive boards, but of plywood production waste - pencils with a diameter of 8-10 cm, tightly packed and protected by two layers of film, which prevents the cooling of organics by melt water and night air in early spring;
• the frame of the nursery is equipped on top not with an arched film cover, as it was before, but with a hinged glass frame with a slope to the south by 15-20º, which enhances the effect of the life-giving solar heat on the soil and seedlings.

At the same time, I note that organic matter in such a greenhouse-nursery should be as diverse as possible and include both lumpy (rotten parts of a tree, stumps and roots, chopped branches, branches and stems, cardboard and paper trimmings, etc.), and crushed (tops, grass, foliage, wood chips, shavings and sawdust) waste, and the former should be laid down in the specified order so that an air cushion forms under the smaller waste.

At the same time, in order to exclude acidification of organic matter and give a "push" to the process of its decomposition, the entire mass of waste should be poured instead of manure with a mixture of kitchen waste, lime, ash and earth, taken in equal proportions, after which it is good to spill instead of manure with a solution of either green or compost slurry or a solution of complex mineral fertilizer.

On top of the waste, a complex mixture of soil about 20-25 cm thick is poured onto organic matter, which has a thickness of about 40 cm. Moreover, it should consist of at least 60% compost (prefabricated, sod or deciduous) and 20-30% of purchased peat soil (Krepysh, Peat effect or Micro-greenhouse) with the addition of sand or sawdust and loamy soil. The beginning of "burning" of organic matter can be judged by the presence of condensation on the inner side of the glass or by the heat clearly felt by the hand under the glass. To "spur" the decomposition of organic matter both after its laying and in early spring in subsequent years, it is effective to spill the soil with boiling water, and after sowing the seeds, cover it with an insulating material.

In conclusion, I note that if there is such a greenhouse-hotbed, any summer resident or gardener for about 5-7 years will no longer have any problems with growing seedlings of vegetable and flower crops, and due to this, yields can be obtained annually 2-3 weeks earlier …