A Small Greenhouse

a.k.a. Greenhouse Number One

Small greenhouse number one came about because we were given a book by Eliot Coleman called “Four Season Harvest.” We then read “The New Organic Grower” by the same author.

These books were real eye openers for my husband and me. We always had a garden and now we realized that we could grow all year long if we had a greenhouse..And it did not need to have heat in it!

So we decided to build a greenhouse.

We then installed cold frames throughout the space we had created. The recommendation at that time from Eliot Coleman was to use cold frames inside a greenhouse. The cold frames would create a mini climate where cold weather plants would grow all winter long.

We were very pleased with this arrangement and found that growing plants in a greenhouse in winter really did work. We grew all kinds of greens and spinach during the winter months - mache, claytonia, cool weather lettuces, spinach and tatsoi. It was very satisfying.

During the summer months when it was too hot in the greenhouse to grow the cold weather crops, we grew cucumbers which love the heat. We put in trellises and confined the crop to long English style cucumbers which have very few seeds.

We were given a tape of the BBC production of ‘The Victorian Kitchen Garden” and were impressed with the ideas that the Victorians had. The Victorian Greenhouse was very complete with hot water pipes running through to create heat.

But in order to create heat in their cold frames, they first put in about a foot of horse manure and then added another foot of soil on top. As the horse manure composted it created heat which heated the cold frame. The Victorians were able to grow many things in those cold frames including strawberries in the cool months of the year.

We were able to try this horse manure technique and while we didn’t grow strawberries, we did grow early potatoes and yes, the cold frame in our small greenhouse was “hot”!