Category: Greenhouses

Our intrepid constructors have been helping Griffin Glasshouses out on a large job in Chester in the UK.  Here is a picture of the Greenhouse as it is just before the glass was due to go on.  Beautiful job.  Mark it in your diary for when you win the lottery.

We built this Junior Victorian Greenhouse near Cahirciveen, and the end of the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry last week.  Customer was delighted and invited us to refer people to see it there.  The Junior Greenhouse from Janssens is an entry level Greenhouse meaning a basic Greenhouse in their range but compared to many domestic Greenhouses it is head and shoulders above them by virtue of the box section glazing bars (much stronger than standard domestic ones) and 4mm full sheet toughened glass.  The Junior Victorian is stunning in its black powder coated frame.

We completed a lovely 9m x 20m Polydome Tunnel last week in Kilkenny.  This model has new aluminium double sliding doors giving an effective door entrance height of 2.3m and 2.8m in width.  The new doors are fitted with 16mm twin wall polycarbonate.  This Polytunnel was fitted with roll up side ventilation, crop support bars and 900 gauge polythene.  All done and dusted despite adverse weather conditions (all credit to our hardy employed Polytunnel constructors).  The customer is delighted and in fact buying a second smaller Polytunnel for their son in Donegal.

The latest addition to our Greenhouses on Display.  A revolutionary new design for the door entrance, full marks for innovation to Eden Greenhouses with the new zero threshold design.   The model on display is a ‘Blockley’ and is 2.56m x 3.79m (8ft 5 ins x 12ft 6 ins).  These new models from Eden have a slightly different shade of Green polyester powder coating which is very attractive and they incorporate several more new features – much larger gutter sections and a ridge bar which Eden tell me increase the strength of the structure by 30%.  The glass instead of being held in place with spring wire glazing clips as before has a new system which provides a much more secure fixing and an attractive finish.  The zero door threshold means that when you walk in the door entrance there is nothing to trip up over or any channels to catch annoying small stones in.  Gold star for innovation goes to Eden.

Come and see our latest Greenhouse on display in Birr today.

Plants grown among others to help them are called companion plants.  Some people believe that companion plants can improve the health of crops or the flavour of their produce.  But the commonest belief is that they can protect crops from insect pests by either distracting them or repelling them, or attract predator insects to eat them with their strong scents.  It’s no coincidence that many of the plants used as companion plants are strongly aromatic.

Is there any truth in the notion, or is it just old wives’ tales?  The debate rages.  Scientific research is scanty because chemical companies can’t afford to prove that plants protect crops as well as their chemicals do.  But we know that many plants like Derris and Pyrethrum have evolved to protect themselves with their own in-built insecticides, and that insects have evolved to avoid their scents.  And old wives’ tales are often based on centuries of careful observation.

Tomatoes are believed to benefit from basil, chives, coriander, mint, oregano, parsley, sage or thyme planted near or between them.  Don’t use brassicas such as cabbage or turnips, or nasturtiums, which are believed to harm tomato growth and yields.  Cucumbers, however, benefit from brassicas and nasturtiums but not aromatic herbs! If growing both tomatoes and cucumbers in the same greenhouse try French marigolds (Tagetes) or maybe Nicandra physaloides, the Shoo-fly plant.  If it doesn’t work there’s no harm done, and if it does you save on expensive chemical controls.

Weeds cause the same problems in a greenhouse as in the open garden: they compete with crops for water and minerals, harbour pests and diseases and make gardening more difficult.  They also raise the humidity of the air, encouraging grey mould and other fungus problems.  And because greenhouses protect weeds from cold and wind in the same way as crop plants, they grow faster than open-ground weeds and create problems sooner.

Before you sow or plant crops in a greenhouse, make sure that the soil is free from perennial weeds like scutch-grass and ground elder.  It is hard to dig up every tiny bit of their brittle roots, but you have to do it or they will re-grow from the bits you missed.  You could spray their leaves with glyphosate weed killer, but it is hard to keep the droplets off crop leaves unless you spray before planting the crops.  Read the instructions before you use garden chemicals: they change over time and you may confuse them with another chemical’s directions or misremember them from last time.

Pull the weeds among growing crops when they are still very small: it’s quicker and easier then, it does less damage to the crop roots and they have no chance to set seed and cause you future work.  In the heat of a greenhouse they can seed very quickly, so don’t leave them too long!  Check for weeds under staging and low-growing plants, in corners and at the bases of walls.  Compost or bury the pulled weeds right away: if you leave them lying around they could release disease spores to infect your crops.

Note from Polydome:  Take care about using sprays inside a Glasshouse or Polytunnel.  If the spray gets on to your glass or polythene it may well come down onto your plants with condensation.  It is safer to use a weed lick or similar device to apply the weed killer without using a spray. 

December is a good month for washing down your greenhouse if it’s empty, or insulating it if you have plants in it.  But it’s also a good month for thinking about how to make it easier to use next year.  One possibility to consider is installing a water-butt to save on carrying and using mains water.  They are widely available and soon pay back their cost in convenience and saved water-charges.  It’s amazing how much rainwater falls on even a small roof each year.

It’s easy to buy a kit comprising a tank with child-proof lid and water-tap, a base to stand it on so it’s high enough to fit a watering-can under the tap, and a rainwater diverter that fits into a downpipe.  If you have a polytunnel it will be difficult or impossible to harvest rainwater from the cladding, but Polydome is working on the problem and in the meantime there may be a downpipe on a building nearby that you could use.  Glasshouses usually have gutters but may not have downpipes, so you may need to run a short length of hose from the gutter into the water-butt.  Make sure that the ground under the base is dead level and even to keep the water-butt stable: every litre of water weighs a kilo and a full butt could seriously injure someone if it fell on them.  I put a concrete patio-slab under ours and it worked well.  Use plumber’s tape when screwing the tap into the bottom of the butt, and don’t over-tighten it or you might wring the threads.

If the water-butt is too low for filling watering cans you can buy an electric pump to power a hose or irrigation system, or move the water to where you want it.