Covering The Greenhouse With Spunbond Saved From Heat And Cold

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

The little house with a secret

Seedlings grow in the greenhouse

Last year I tested a new greenhouse of my own design. I really enjoyed growing thermophilic vegetables in it. Not only is it easy to build, but there is one more feature - the tomatoes and peppers planted in it spent the whole season under a cover made of non-woven covering material (spunbond). And they were comfortable.

Why did I come to this conclusion? Because for the past few years we have not been able to get a full-fledged crop of peppers in a film greenhouse, and last season my wife and I cooked lecho from pepper for the whole winter. Tomatoes in this greenhouse bore fruit longer than in a film greenhouse, and later than others they learned what late blight is. And all because the plants were not afraid of either the sweltering heat or the nighttime cold snaps. But first things first.

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Inside view of the greenhouse

From boards with a cross section of 100x50 mm, I put together a box measuring 2.5x1.2 meters. I made two vertical posts 80 cm high and a longitudinal bar. I connected them into a groove. The upper part of the crossbeam was rounded off with a plane so that the covering material would not tear on it later.

In the upper parts of the long sides of the box, I made holes 4-5 cm deep with a feather drill 20 mm in diameter - these are grooves for arcs from a thin polyethylene pipe. The distances between them should be the same, I got about 60 cm. Then, with the same feather drill, I made through holes in the upper longitudinal bar - through these holes the arcs will be "threaded". These upper holes must be exactly the same distance as the lower ones, and they must match, otherwise the greenhouse will turn out to be skewed.

This is how pipe arcs are fixed

Then he took a polyethylene pipe with a diameter of 20 mm and measured out 5 identical segments so that one end of the segment would enter the groove on one side of the box, and the other could be “threaded” through the hole in the upper crossbar and drowned in the hole on the opposite side of the box. The pipe sections must form a straight arc.

The covering material was fixed between two slats 2.5 m long. But I cut off the spunbond "with a margin" along the long sides in such a way that these free parts could "pack" the ends of the greenhouse. I measured the width of the web so that the fastening rails were at the level of the lower part of the box.

For these rails, I made hooks at the bottom of the box (4 pieces in total), and staples on the rails. I adjusted the mounts so that the slats fit very tightly to the box.

The greenhouse is open for ventilation

I placed the garden bed from north to south, in this case the plants from all sides will be equally illuminated by the sun. He dug up the soil, having previously scattered the rotted manure over it, and set the structure in place. The spouse planted seedlings of peppers and tomatoes in a greenhouse at the end of May. We additionally covered the greenhouse with foil from above until acceptably warm weather was established.

So, I repeat, the plants spent the whole summer under cover from above, but with the ends open for ventilation. Spunbond transmits sunlight well and does not disturb air exchange. And at night there has been no particular heat in recent years.

If a slight cold snap was expected, in the evening my wife and I closed the ends, and in the morning we opened, then carefully rolled up the spunbond and pressed it with bricks to the box. In strong winds, the covering material was opened only from one end - to reduce the windage. This design helped us a lot during the hurricane. All the plants in the open field were beaten by the hail, and those in the shelter escaped.

Hot weather greenhouse

Towards the end of the summer, they additionally covered the structure with a film if it was cold. It is obligatory for the night, if presumably the air temperature was expected around + 14 … + 15 ° С.

The greenhouse was fully opened only on warm, cloudy days, so that tomatoes and peppers could catch the scant sun rays. In this case, the spunbond was folded onto a skate and tied directly on top with a rope to the upper crossbar.