How to: set up your greenhouse ready for spring

It might feel as though spring is a long way off, what with that lovely nip in the air in the mornings, but the daffodils are out, the sun is starting to shine, and the clocks will be going forward any minute now, so now is the time to start getting your greenhouse ready for the growing season.

If you were "good" .... *laughs* ... you will have done all this work last year, as described in this article on cleaning out the greenhouse. 

And it will look something like this one, left.

Everything out, cleaned the glass, swept the floor, lovely!

But if you haven't quite done it yet, no worries, now is the time, so get out there and do now: even if the air is a bit cold, you'll be nice and snug, working inside the greenhouse, and just think how virtuous you will feel afterwards.

Once the greenhouse is emptied, cleaned, swept, and the useful things have been put back neatly, it's time to get your gro-bags ready, and I've written about how to fluff them up, already this year. 

There's nothing worse that pancake flat, rock-hard gro-bags.

Once you've done that, you can put them in position, and I always recommend the addition of some collars, which are these things:

 That - left - is a whole stack of them, and the idea is that you position three of them along a standard gro-bag.

To do this, press them lightly in place - they have serrated bottoms, not enough to cut their way in (well, not without ripping the gro-bag to shreds. Ask me how I know... yes, I tried it once, never again) but enough to leave a ring of small holes.

Using scissors, cut around those holes:

I've shown you all three, here, but of course you'd normally only do one at a time, to reduce the risk of making a mess in the greenhouse.

Having cut the holes, push the collars into place.

Once they are sitting comfortably, fill up the central well with a bit of extra multi-purpose compost.

I don't advocate the use of home-made garden compost in this situation, because it is invariably full of weed seeds, and the whole point of buying gro-bags is that they contain fresh, clean, sterile - as far as weeds are concerned - compost.

So, top them up with bought-in compost, then plant your greenhouse seedlings, one per collar.

(OK sometimes I plant up two per collar, then remove the weaker of the two after a couple of weeks...)

Once they are in place, you can pop in the irrigation drippers, if you have them: and you can then construct your framework of supports.

I always like to do the planting first, because otherwise I am trying to put delicate little seedlings into position, while knocking my head on the canes.. but you might prefer to do the building work first, and then plant them up. 

It really doesn't matter, just do it whichever way suits you.

The collars have three main advantages: firstly, they give your greenhouse plants a bit more soil in which to grow, as gro-bags are pretty shallow.

Secondly, they protect the tiny new plants, because it is much harder to accidentally brush against them while watering etc, when they are protected by the sides of the collar.

And thirdly, the main and best advantage - easy watering! Even if you have irrigation, there are going to be times when you are watering manually: giving them their weekly dose of tomato food, for example. And the beauty of the collars is that you can slosh the water into the outer ring of each collar without disturbing the seedling, without having to be careful not to jet-wash it to smithereens, without getting the foliage wet, and without creating those crusty-topped craters on the soil.

It also keeps all the water inside the gro-bag, and not spilling out all over the floor.

Here's a quick glimpse of one of "my" greenhouses, from last year, with gro-bags, collars, bamboo cane supports, and a promising crop of tomatoes and sweet peppers.

Just to encourage you, to get out there and set it up!

Which also reminds me, that now is the time to start off the plants that you'll be wanting in the greenhouse. 

I always leave a note in my diary to start them off at the end of February, and I always look at the note and think, "Nooo! It's far too early!" and then of course we are suddenly into late March, the sun comes out, the greenhouse gets hot, and I wish that I'd done them a couple of weeks ago....

 

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