I thought you might be interested in seeing how we built our Greenhouse. A Greenhouse is a fantastic addition to any home and it can be built cheaper than you may think.

The picture above is a “temporary” Greenhouse that the Gman made soon after we moved here.

This is what it looked like last year – we had squash, beans and cukes in there.

For our next Greenhouses, the Gman said we would reuse the roof panels from the Greenhouse in the picture.

The roof panels are in two pieces…

We decided to build the new Greenhouse right on top of the oldest compost pile. This way it would be easy to rake out, take away the excess, and leave some really awesome soil underneath the plants.

 It’s right next to a pile of Really Good dirt….it’s also right next to the second oldest compost pile….

 First he framed up one wall.

Then another, and another and the basic frame was ready.

 Then we finished framing the walls.

We put logs inside where we needed to level out the soil/compost.

Then I started raking out all the compost and adding that good soil from the pile behind the greenhouse.

 Whatever compost wasn’t ready, I chucked it out onto the other compost pile – siting the Greenhouse right here was a lot less work when it came to hauling compost.

 Here you can see the lay of the land we were working with – that middle hump inside the greenhouse is the left over pile of finished compost.

 Over time, I”ll dig all that out and raise those beds inside the greenhouse.

A better picture of the log and compost detail.

Then we started working on putting those roof panels into place. He put a great pitch on the roof and it should be better to withstand all the snow in Winter.  

Later, we put the poly around the sides. We used 6mm Poly but Greenhouse poly is 10mm and it would last longer. We had a roll of 6mm laying around from a building project so we just used that instead. (As I edit this post on July 17, 2011, that 6mm Poly is STILL intact. A pleasant surprise.) 

I played around with building rock faces for those front open faces on either side.

And here’s what it looks like from the porch – we’re pretty happy! A fair bit of work, but it will add a LOT to our homestead.

This Greenhouse has enabled us to grow larger harvests of Peppers, Tomatoes and even some Corn. If you live in a Northern climate, you cannot go wrong building a Greenhouse.

Here’s a link for an EBook all about  Building Your Own Greenhouse.  Using basic tools, you save a lot of money building your own, as opposed to buying a new Greenhouse. The eBook includes printable Greenhouse plans, along with step by step instructions.

Lighting, ventilation, irrigation systems, essential conditions – it is all covered in the eBook. 

Check out the Ebook here and Happy Growing to you!