What I Wish I Knew BEFORE I Got A Greenhouse

I've had my greenhouse for about six months now and it's become a mainstay in the garden. But there are a lot of things I wish I knew before I designed it and it was built. So in this video, I'm going to take you through some of the things you have to know before you get a greenhouse. First thing is something I fortunately did right, but only with the help of BC Greenhouses, who are the sponsor of the video, more on that later, but also designed and built this greenhouse with me. So it's the placement of the greenhouse, guys. Much like a garden, accessibility is super important. You want to be able to walk out and access it so that your investment in the greenhouse is actually used. You get to actually walk in and enjoy the space. Secondarily it is the placement in relation to the sun. I actually was going to put the greenhouse in a spot that would have been blocked by the sun about 50% of the day. Stupid idea. Silly. Fortunately I was talked out of that and it is in this beautiful location right here in the middle of the garden. And I can sort of garden around it and make it part of the space, which brings me to the next thing I wish I knew. As a bit of a haphazard gardener sometimes I will just throw stuff in the ground. And it's no different with the greenhouse, except for there's some serious consequences if you do that. So what I'm talking about here is the greenhouse foundation. No matter where you're getting your greenhouse, you do need to do some work beforehand. Whether it's, you know, something you just kind of pop up or a more structured system like this, we had to prepare the ground. And I didn't really know quite what went into that until we dug into the details. So we had to make sure that we leveled the ground. Silly, but we had irrigation pipes running underneath. So we had to be very careful to not nick those. And then we had to lay down the right type of fabric and gravel and build this wooden foundation out of four by fours before the build process started so that when BC Greenhouses got here, they could just start constructing. And so that was a little bit out of my depth as far as skill goes. So fortunately a friend of Epic, David came down and lended a hand. He's an expert grader. So just be mindful that it is a permanent structure and you're going to want to do it right. In fact, I can remember when I put in the Epic shed back in the day, I thought I was very fancy. I thought I was doing the right kind of prep. I bought one of those tools from a big box store that kind of levels the ground out. I put gravel down. Lo and behold, my eight by 10 foot shed, I put the gravel down in the wrong orientation, like shifted 90 degrees. Very silly of me. I still can't live it down to this day. So remember an ounce of preparation worth a pound of cure. Just do it right from the very start. Once the greenhouse is installed, the options are limitless and sometimes that can paralyze you. I remember when we put the gravel base in, which was the flooring of choice for me, I had these little cedar benches that BC Greenhouses sent out and that's pretty much it. No lights, which we've since added, no shelving, no custom cedar bench. And so just these two things in here. And I was like, it's a blank slate. I don't know what I'm supposed to really do next. So what I did is I had all my seed starting equipment over on this side, closer towards the sun. And we really just used the greenhouse as a seed starting space and got absolutely incredible results. Way better results than either starting indoors or starting outdoors in our warmer climate here. In fact, Jacques on our team remarked at how much better the seedlings grown here at the Epic Homestead were doing than some of the stuff that he was doing at his house. He might actually be on the phone with BC Greenhouses as we speak, trying to get one going. Yeah, I think like eight feet would probably be good. I think the customizability is something I didn't really realize. The greenhouse really can be whatever you want it to be. So for me, what we ended up doing is we built out a custom cedar potting bench. It is going to be in here forever. It is perfectly fit to the length of this greenhouse just out of two by fours and four by fours, but we made it really, really sturdy. And then we just used some really simple angle brackets that I just got at a big box store and some two by 10 wood to create additional shelving for some of these like ancillary tools, like a watering can or pruners that I can put off the growing surface. So that is a little customization that I did on this side. This is more of my seed starting, some of my more rare crops and then some houseplants down below. But if you run electricity to it, which we did do, it wasn't even that expensive because we placed it in the right location. It's not too far from our electricity panel. They ran wiring out, really was maybe a couple hundred bucks or so. I can get some lighting in here. So at night when I'm out here, it's nice and cool, finally cools off. It is so enjoyable. Put a little music on, get a potting session going, get a pruning session going, or maybe just, I don't know, read a book. So it really speaks to how much the greenhouse unlocks. I think when you think of one, you think, okay, cool. Like it's a little warmer and a little more humid so you can start seeds faster. That is definitely true. But something I did not realize before I got it and actually started growing it out over the last six months is the sheer variety that it unlocks for you. So I want to show you some of my favorite plants I have in here that there is 0% chance I would have been able to grow otherwise. This was sent by a friend of Epic, shampoo ginger. This is a crazy, crazy ginger. In fact, the sort of juices of which are used to produce hair products, you won't see it yet, but there will be a sort of flower cluster up here that you can squeeze and like this juice comes out and it's a little bit eerie, a little bit creepy, but also somehow satisfying. So I have shampoo ginger in here. I also have coffee. This is a plant that I had at the homestead for a long, long time, but it never thrived until it got into the greenhouse. I remember in Hawaii, I was obsessed with growing coffee as a kid. It's like 12, 13, 14. I saw those trees. I said, someday I want to grow that. Now I actually can because the environment allows for it. I have a curry plant going in here. I have some interesting roses, some tomatoes and of course the seedlings, which I think for a lot of you is going to be one of the most important things that you'll grow. Because look, I grow here in San Diego zone 10B. You would think, why does this guy even need a greenhouse? His outdoor environment is basically a greenhouse and you're not necessarily wrong. You don't need a greenhouse at all. I just wanted a greenhouse. But what I've noticed is my germination consistency on all of my seedlings, whether they be in spring, starting like late winter for an early spring, starting again in spring for summer or starting in summer for a late summer or early fall harvest. Any of those seed start timings, the greenhouse has dramatically improved the germination rate. So how many are actually germinating per cell and also the growth rate of those plants. And that's without adding a whole lot of fertility. So I'll show you kind of what I do here that helps out a lot. First of all, speaking to customization, we have water we plumbed in. So we kind of came in off of our irrigation system, came under and just use one of these little dram hoses to get water in. But what I'll do now is I'll use our universal bottom trays, these 10-20 trays, and I'll just fill them up with about a half inch of water or so. Once a day, maybe once every two days. It really depends on how hot it gets in here. And then if you look at the bottom of the seed tray, that's going to wick that water right up. So my watering consistency has improved quite a bit and the temps are a lot better. And so the plants can utilize all of the resources, the water, the air, the nutrients a lot quicker, thus they grow a lot faster. I mean, just take a look. Extremely healthy. I mean, look at the root systems there. It's growing out perfectly white, great branching. Probably should have planted these, but no worries. I can get these in the ground pretty soon. So what I've noticed is that I have way more overall consistency, but I'm also way more likely to use all the stuff that I'm planting in the greenhouse out in the garden. So the sort of cycle, I guess, of seed starting, whether it's flowers or vegetables, it's more reliable. So my harvests when it comes time for the garden, they are also more abundant and reliable. And I also have a lot more flowers in the garden. So the beauty this year has been a lot better. This video is sponsored by BC Greenhouses who of course built this greenhouse. I worked with them over the course of, I don't know, a month or two to design the greenhouse to exactly what I wanted. So I'll be straight up with you guys. This is a fancy greenhouse. They do not only make fancy greenhouses. They make greenhouses that are much more reasonably priced, smaller scale, great for a backyard gardener. Not only that, they are some of the friendliest people I have ever worked with. I did not know much about greenhouses when I started. So I had all these questions I was peppering them with. I hopped on with Danny on their design team and he walked me through all the different specifications and customizations you could make and also how to keep it simple and smaller footprint if I wanted. And so they are our go-to recommendation for greenhouses. If you are in the market, give them a call in the link down below. And let's get back to the video. A piece that I was actually quite surprised by was just how hot it can get in the greenhouse. I'm actually sweating right now and it's only about 80 degrees. In fact, take a look. This is something that we installed that we really love here. And it's the min max thermometer. So the minimum temperature today has been 78 degrees. The maximum has been 102.4 and it's currently 80 degrees Fahrenheit. So that gives me a sense of the temperatures the plants in here are experiencing. And then that gives me the ability to modulate. So I'll show you some simple ways we do it. And then some a little bit more fancy ways that we do it. The simplest would be this roto crank vent right here. This is a manual crank that I can just come up and open up just like this. So if it's getting too hot, remember heat rises so I can vent out of the top like this and open that all the way up. A slightly fancier version of this would be what's called this louvered vent. So this system here has a little piston and there's some wax in there that will contract or expand based on the temperature. So right now because it's 80 degrees, that wax has expanded and it has pushed that piston and opened the door mechanically automatically. So no electricity required. That is probably the second step up. The third step is what you'll see in the corner over there, which is an exhaust fan that is also connected to a thermostat and an intake vent. So let me show you that. This has really been a lifesaver as we've gotten into the heat of summer. So what I have over here is a thermostat and if I can turn it, it'll turn it down to 80 and that should trigger it to go on because it's about 80 in here right now. And there you go. This vent will open up, which allows cool air to come in. And then up top here, this will vent out of the top. The only caveat I'll say is you can't have fresh air coming in from the top because you want it to cycle through and exit all the hot air. So you actually have to have a bit of a closed system. So sometimes I'll keep this closed, keep the door closed and the window on the door closed and close out the louvers if I really want to vent out the air. It's counterintuitive, but it cools it down a bit faster. So there's a lot of stuff you can grow in a greenhouse, no doubt. But what about growing around the greenhouse? I'll admit, when we first put this in, we had basically nothing around it and it didn't look that good until I let go a little bit. And I planted some sunflowers, some nasturtiums. I let the garden creep a little bit this way. I let my royal apricot tree kind of get a little close to the greenhouse to make it feel like it was part of the ecosystem. Cause it really is here at the homestead. It's a mainstay. It's where we spend a lot of time, start all of our seeds, migrate plants in and out to nurse them. And honestly, as winter comes, this will be the first winter with the greenhouse, move peppers maybe out of the ground into the greenhouse to overwinter them. Something I haven't experienced yet, but I'm very, very excited for. So yes, this is a fancy greenhouse, no doubt about that. But the beauty of BC Greenhouse is that they can hit the mark at a lot of different price points, especially on that lower end. So give them a call. They are absolutely some of the best greenhouse builders in the business. And until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.