Tony Fawcett explains how his daughter changed his mind on greenhouses
Our gardening columnist Tony Fawcett never used to be enamoured with greenhouses. So what did his daughter do that completely changed his mind?
WANT to take your vegie gardening to a new level? If so, then maybe it’s time to look at a greenhouse.
I have dabbled in greenhouse growing over the years and had reasonable success, but never have I become that involved, preferring to raise our vegetables in open garden beds.
Recently, though, that has changed. Dramatically.
I’ve had a major rethink, all thanks to my daughter and her husband.
My daughter, I should explain, is a former garden hater. She loathed them, hating gardening with an intensity.
It was probably to be expected. When she was a teenager, I was the editor of a gardening magazine and my wife and I dragged her (yes, sometimes kicking and screaming) to nurseries, open gardens and garden festivals across the state.
I feared her early hatred of anything horticultural might be a burden for life. Thankfully it wasn’t.
Miraculously, it seems, she caught the bug. As a young mum she became a keen gardener, soaked up knowledge like a sponge. In fact, she’s become a gardening natural.
Along the way her husband, who I don’t think will mind me observing wouldn’t have known the difference between a dibber and a dahlia, was similarly afflicted.
Today, they’re both garden addicts, and that’s where greenhouses come in.
For a couple of years they have been growing many of their backyard vegies in one.
At first, I confess, I regarded their greenhouse growing as a bit of a novelty.
Then I noticed they were producing crops way out of season — tomatoes well before the traditional picking start time of late December, warmth-loving eggplants and capsicums just short of winter.
There seems little they can’t grow in their 4m x 2m igloo-like polycarbonate growing centre.
From beans to basil and crisp, healthy spinach, they have extended their fruiting and cropping season greatly.
I estimate it extends their productive season by two to three weeks. It might not sound a lot, but crop results can be sizeable.
Initially they grew plants in polystyrene boxes. Now it’s in two raised corrugated beds that offer greater growing space.
Here, too, they sow seeds in plastic seedlings trays of seed-raising mix to produce plants for outside growing.
So inspiring are their crops, and so impressed have I been with their out-of-season produce, I made use of my enforced social isolating to repair and fire up my own long-unused greenhouse with sowings of winter/spring crops.
In these uncertain days, such a vegie-growing greenhouse has lots of pluses, adding more certainty to obtaining produce when wanted.
Through winter it also allows gardening time under cover when outside conditions are appalling.
GREENHOUSE, HOTHOUSE OR GLASSHOUSE?
IF YOU’RE wondering about the difference between a greenhouse and a hothouse, the latter generally includes a heat source to extend cropping still further. A glasshouse simply means its panelling is of glass, whereas many of today’s greenhouses are of cheaper polycarbonate panels.
Whatever you choose, having electricity and water on hand is important.
Today, more gardeners are installing grow-lights, both for warmth and to encourage night and day growth during the chilly dark days of winter.
On dull days seedlings in particular tend to grow long and leggy in their search for light, a problem that’s avoided with grow lights.
Today’s domestic greenhouses generally come in kit-form. If you’re not handy, you can pay to have them installed. If you’re super handy, making your own greenhouse is not out of the question, and there’s many instructions on the internet.
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK
PLANT broad beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, onions, parsnip, radish, silverbeet, spinach and turnip.
GIVE hedges a shaping trim before winter.
CUT back cannas.
DIG up and divide bearded iris.
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TIME FOR YOUR PLANTS TO MAKE A MOVE
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