Greenhouses for Dummies

Garden greenhouse

Whether you're a house plant fan, a gardening guru, or someone who grows his own pot; chances are that at one time or another you've looked into buying a small greenhouse to build in your backyard. Once you recovered from the sticker shock, you probably googled the possibility of building one on your own. We know that for a fact – one of our researchers did just that. Luckily for him, he skipped over the freelance bull out there and looked for books and plans written by professionals. That's why he never accidentally encountered the article at WriteEdge.com written by someone calling herself Raradra (she's really Michelle Harlow, part owner of the site); an article cleverly titled "How to Build Your Own Greenhouse."¹ Sadly, the title was the only clever bit of this post...

Michelle may have meant well, but when she started her post by telling us

"Greenhouses are great – not only do they house all your plants in one place, they can monitor the environment..."

she raised the bar for greenhouses everywhere. An accomplished DIYer could build a passive greenhouse, but one that "monitors the environment" is a rather tall order. Michelle then babbles a bit about planning, and then explains how to build a greenhouse on the cheap:

"Reclaim and salvage old materials..."

Wonder of wonders, the word "pallet" doesn't appear anywhere; though where one is going to be able to "reclaim" the most expensive part of a greenhouse -- the glazing -- is never addressed. And then there's the sage advice: "...if you live in a cold area an insulated greenhouse is most likely required. Check with your local garden center as to what they use." If you live in an actual cold area, insulation probably won't help much: what you're going to need is something Harlow mentions in the very next paragraph: "...you will need to ensure your greenhouse has adequate air circulation, heaters for winter and humidity controls as well as soil to deter pests." We had to look at that last bit a couple of times: does Michelle really think soil is in a greenhouse as a pest deterrent? Did she not run across the term "growing medium" at any point in her (apparently limited) research? On the topic of sunlight, she advises us to

"...consider the direction of sunlight in your garden and place the greenhouse on the East or West for best use of light."

But Michelle! we thought that the south side of the garden (north side in the southern hemisphere) would be the best! Shouldn't you evaluate which area of your yard gets the most consistent sunlight instead of arbitrarily using compass directions? On the topic of glazing (which she calls coverings), we "learn"

"You can also affect the warmth and humidity by the coverings you use. Glass or fiberglass keep things warmer, but are more expensive. They do last longer so it may be a false economy to opt for cheaper coverings as they need to be replaced more often."

Probably not fiberglass, since it's usually translucent at best -- did she mean Plexiglas®? acrylic? and what would those cheaper "coverings" be, anyway? Finally, we did find this line amusing:

"Not all pests are bad. Some inhibit the spread of other more deadly pests and as such introducing one pest can actually help your plants to flourish..."

Clearly, Harlow needs to learn the difference between "pests" and "insects" if she's going to try to edificate her readers about beneficial insects. 

When all is said and done, Michelle (Raradra) never actually said word one about how to build a greenhouse – all she did was give some half-assed advice about how to plan a greenhouse and said a few things about how to equip one. There's not a word about framing or flooring and nothing about ventilation: just some throwaway comments about adding heat and water (again, rather much for the average DIYer). We think that was worthless, definitely in the bait and switch category of "advice" – and that's why Michelle gets our Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ This website is now defunct, but you can see the post using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   writedge.com/how-to-build-your-own-greenhouse/

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