You are going to love this simple greenhouse design by Dick. It can be set up in a matter of minutes and breaks down for easy storage. This design can help extend your growing season which means that you can produce more of your own food.
A huge thanks to Dick from California for sharing his clever design with us!
You can purchase supplies at your local hardware store or online.
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With all of our wacky weather, as we transition from winter to spring,
what are you doing to make sure you protect your plants from those untimely frosts?
We've got a great idea for you.
Hey Provident Preppers, I'm Jonathan. Today we're talking about how we protect our tender plants
during this springtime when sometimes we get an unexpected frost. This is one of the ways that
we do it, is using these five gallon jugs that came from a water deliverer. They just throw away
after so many uses, and we cut the bottoms off and made little greenhouses out of them. We have a
whole arsenal of things that we do to protect our plants, and if you want to click the card in the
corner, we'll let you see some of those. But we also wanted to highlight our friend Dick, who is
definitely part of the solution. He came up with a really unique way to protect his plants, and so
take a look at this. The basic concept is that you are building a tent over your planting area.
The framework for the tent is made from PVC pipe. I used half inch pipe because that's what I had
laying around the house. The key to making it reusable and storable is that the elbows and
joints are not glued. That makes it easy to take apart, bundle up the pipe, throw the elbows and
joints into a bucket, and you're ready to use them the next time you need a greenhouse. In this area
of the yard, I have livestock watering troughs as my raised planters. They come in all shapes and
sizes, and this is the only time that I cut the horizontal pipe to length because I have so many
troughs of the same length. If you purchase the livestock watering troughs from a ranch supply,
they can cost between $200 and $400. But I'm able to drive through the foothills, and some of the
ranchers have piles of these stacked up because the bottoms have rusted through. They can't use
them anymore, but that is exactly what you need for drainage. If you ask the rancher, they may
give them to you free if you just haul them away. The vertical pipes are of varying lengths from two
feet to six foot, depending on the need. The short framework is for seeds planted directly into the
ground and recent transplants. The medium height would be if you have newly transplanted plants
that may need additional protection from a cold snap. I can't think of any need for the tall one
that's in the background, but any framework that tall would require additional support.
If you notice the green steel posts at the end of each planter, these are semi-permanent,
and I'll explain later. To create the kent, you use plastic sheeting. Notice the sheeting is not
cut to width and is allowed to hang loose. This allows me to use differing framework heights.
The length is cut long enough to wrap around the ends. The plastic is held down by magnets
because the planters in this area are made from steel. This is a picture of the end of the
greenhouse, just held together simply with clothespins. In this section of my yard, I have
traditional wooden raised beds. The PVC structure can also be used here and can be of any length.
Planting beds are 24 feet long. Just use connectors to extend the horizontal pipe,
but remember no glue. To hold the plastic down, simply nail steel squares to the wooden planter
and attach the magnets at that point, or you can just lay rebar on top of the plastic at the sides
of the planter, and that will hold the plastic down. If you don't have enough magnets, try Amazon.
They have many different sizes. I think the best magnets are the magnetic badge holders.
They cost about $35 for 100 magnets, and that includes the magnet and the steel base,
making it about 35 cents per magnet. These badge holders are very strong as they need to work
through thick clothing. Notice the vertical PVC posts in between the green steel posts.
This is for additional support to the horizontal if they run too long. That support is made from
a T-connector, which is one-half inch by three-quarter inch by three-quarter inch,
thus allowing it to move anywhere along that horizontal pipe. Now for the steel green T-posts.
Once the portable greenhouse has been removed, I can put up steel latticework to grow my vegetables
vertically. The latticework can also be removed in the winter because it is just held on with zip ties.
Well, there you have it, and we want to thank you, Dick, for sharing your ideas with us.
And now for the question of the day. What ideas do you have for protecting your plants,
those little tender cuties, from getting nipped by frost?
Comment below, and thanks for being part of the solution.
