Outside gardeners that have a small greenhouse to nurture small seedlings have found that their greenhouse is handy as a hay rake after mowing day. After someone has owned a plant house for a few seasons, the next step is to build an addition and utilize the house or houses for crop production as well as for the growing new plants. With a properly built greenhouse, you can have fresh vegetables all year long. For one household, a building about 12 or 16 feet wide and 20 to 30 feet long would be of sufficient for this purpose. A person who plans to build a greenhouse should consider the location of the houses in proximity to soil, drainage, distance from the residence, available outside water supply, etc.
It’s best to have the greenhouse built on level land that has good drainage and not on a hillside. A building site on a slope with elevated land above the house may cause you some problems. Water may run into the houses on the surface of the soil.
There should be some form of protection from the cold, strong winds. You can do this by building the greenhouses in a location near to your house, trees, or a fence, but not too close. There should be an abundant supply of good, clear water. If city water is the only thing you have available, consider getting a rain barrel with an electric pump. The reason for this is most city water services have chlorine and other chemicals mixed in. The rain barrel will provide you with untainted pure water to take care of your plants.
My wife had me build a greenhouse in the back yard a few years back. It wasn’t that difficult to build either. Below are scale plans for building one like mine.
Click here to download the drawing in PDF. It’s free! The drawing is on 11″ x 17″ paper and once printed is 1/4″ = 1′-0″ scale. To print it to scale, do not print to fit unless you’re wanting to put it on smaller paper. If you don’t have a printer that will print that large, I’m sure Office Max or Staples does.
Please visit http://draftingschool.net if you’d like to learn to create drawings like this.
