Greenhouse Heating

Feeling Hot Hot Hot ...

watching the temperature in the greenhouse

Down at the allotment it’s all go at this time of year ... throughout March we’re had a mega planting time with early bedding plants and root crops being sown in seed trays and plug trays.

Without the luxury of electric at the allotment ... and being your typical ‘mean’ gardener when it comes to spending money we’ve created a hot greenhouse for giving our seeds a quick and healthy start to life and then transfer them off into our polytunnel ...

We keep one of our 6’ x 6’ glass greenhouses hot by heating it with a single burner paraffin heater.

seed trays and plug trays full of new seedlings in our greenhouse

It’s costing us about £12 a week in paraffin to keep this area hot enough to germinate our seeds as well as give some of our larger plants a spurt of growth ...

Although this may sound quite a lot for such a small area, we know we won’t need to keep the greenhouse to such high temperatures for much longer (hopefully the weather will start to improve) plus ...

we’ve absolutely jammed this greenhouse full of staging and shelving and every available space is covered in trays and trays of seedlings starting to grow ...

plug trays full of new seedlings, in the polytunnel at the allotment

Once the seeds have started to grow we transfer them into our larger polytunnel – where we just provide heat overnight.
This helps the seedlings to grow strongly, preventing them from becoming drawn and leggy which can occur when they get too much heat ...

With all this new growth around it may be hard work … but it feels like its paying off ...