The Hayes Homestead: Mini Greenhouse

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Mini Greenhouse

We wanted to start the majority of our garden this year from seeds, but since we live in Michigan where the weather is totally unpredictable, we need someplace safe and warm for our seeds to (hopefully!) thrive and grow.

We planned on building a greenhouse last summer, but, time got away from us and it just didn't happen. But, thanks to us knowing that we do indeed want to build a greenhouse, we have managed to acquire quite the impressive amount of windows.

So, Jason, with a couple little helpers of course, used a few of the windows from our collection, some nails, shims and a few pieces of wood to whip up a small greenhouse for us to use this spring.

Jason used a total of six windows for the walls of the greenhouse - two for the back, two for the front, and one on each side. He used shims to attach the two windows together for the front and back.

Once the back of the greenhouse was secure, he screwed the sides into place.

Then, he attached the front two windows - again attaching the two windows together with shims.

Once all of the sides were together - we could move our seeds inside! (keep an eye out for a post on how the kids and I started those! :)

We needed to make sure that the greenhouse was as airtight as possible, so just placing a couple of windows on top wasn't going to cut it. After a quick trip to the Depot, Jason nailed in pieces of wood on both sides of the top so that we could easily fit two windows in between.

We are able to easily remove the windows to give the plants fresh air and water them.

However, after a little research, we realized that we were missing something. Due to us still having the possibility of frost, we needed something to protect our seeds in case the temperatures dropped. So, Jason placed two large buckets of water in the greenhouse. This helps hold the heat in overnight so we don't need to worry about cold temperatures ruining our plants.