My New Greenhouse is Finally Ready

[Tina]

I just got some nice new Euphorbias, Tina.

so what did you get- will I be jealous, I'm ready for my mega shop at ELK & still have an empty 10ftx12ft section of GH empty

[ralphrmartin]

Quite a lot of Euphorbias!
One or two choice ones like
E. unispina
Some were old favourites I had before and lost : e.g.
E. aeruginosa
E. baioensis
E. greenwayii
Some were additions to my Madagascan ones, e.g.
E. razafindratsirae
E. sakarahaensis
E. viguieri v. capuroniana
And some were just ones that looked interesting, e.g.
E. asthenacantha
E. cryptospinosa
E. glochidiata
E. tortirama

They came from u4ba:
http://www.u4ba.nl/
Rikus there is pretty friendly, and has quite an extensive list; his prices seem quite reasonable.

[ChrisR]

All that glass would scare me Ralph.....even in retirement I have all on looking after the plants well in my 20 x 10.

And you have a vegetable garden to keep

Have you split any greenhouse sections for different environments or minimum temperatures?

[ralphrmartin]

Well Chris, you grow Conophytums, so you can get about 100 into a square metre!
Not including spares for swaps and sales, I have about 3000 plants in my collection, and aim to repot them every three years, roughly (or, of course, when they outgrow their pots). Doing 20 a day is easy, and in total that only takes a couple of months.

However, I am determined now not to cram them in too much - to give each one proper space and light - a mistake I made in my last glasshouse, compounded by having to take in my father's collection too when he passed away.

The watering will take much less time now too, for the bulk of the plants - they are in trays I can flood, and a Dosatron adds fertiliser at a 100:1 dilution when needed. Of course, Conos, Tylecodons, etc are in a separate "dry" tray where they are watered by hand at appropriate times of year.

The vegetable garden is strictly my wife's. I just eat the results!

As for zones, my part (left and middle sections of the glasshouse) has 3 zones. The outer section is one zone. The middle section is divided roughly 3:1 into 2 zones. The smaller one, with Madagascan stuff, East African plants, etc, I hope to keep at 15C in winter. The larger one will be heated to 5C, with my general collection. The outer part will be unheated, and will have mainly Lobivias, Rebutias, Sulcos and Echinopsis in it. I'm hoping enough heat will leak out to keep it more or less frost free - the Echinopsis will be going next to the 15C section. It will also have all the winter growing plants, as I have found Tylecodons will grow even when almost at 0C (right next to the glass in a greenhouse nominally heated to 5C, in my old greenhouse), and Conophytums survive there too. In practice, as we are on a peninsula, frosts are not too common anyway, and hopefully the sun will heat things up during the day.

There are also a couple of heated propagators in the unheated zone (perhaps not the wisest choice, but they would take up too much space in the other parts). I hope to do a lot more seed raising, something I have always enjoyed in the past.

Another good thing about the setup is that I can set the ventilation and heating for different target temperatures day and night. E.g. the summer target is around 30 during the day, but 18 at night. Hopefully the Crassulas will appreciate this.

One theory I have long had is that constant winter minimum temperatures are worse than swings. In other words, a fixed temperature of 5C all day might kill some plants off, whereas they might be able to stand 0C at night, as long as they can get up to 15C during the day to do a little biochemistry. With my new setup, I can try some experiments.

First though, I want to get everything running as before, to see just how much of an improvement the extra light and better control of temperature are compared to my old greenhouse. I can already see the improvement in quite a few plants after just one month.

[ralphrmartin]

Just thinking - would branches like to hear a talk about my new greenhouse? If I get enough interest, I guess I could make up some slides about it...

[PeterW]

Amazing green house - well done.

[ralphrmartin]

Some promised pictures follow:

Boiler and heating duct (motorised to send heat to compartments 2 and 3 as needed).

Compartment No. 2

Control panel (also controllable by computer from LAN); also note the ventilation fan.

Potting bench and compost mixer.

Dosatron for adding feed to water supply, going to ebb-and-flood trays

Flood tray, with inlet and outlet taps

Propagators for seed raising

Temperature and humidity sensor

Plants, with room for expansion! (Crassulaceae)

[Cactus Jack]

Wow

[Alexander]

Wow, indeed! I know garden centers with fewer plants.

I know it's probably not proper to ask and I won't mind if I don't get an answer, but what is a ballpark amount one would have to spend on such a greenhouse with this kind of automation/equipment?

[Cactusgirl]

Amazing set up. We are currently building the base for my 16x8 greenhouse and I thought that was massive but your greenhouse totally dwarfs that! (But then I have only got about 40 plants at present!)