Using a Shade section and the Greenhouse Annex

A Shade Section

In my greenhouse I make good use of the shaded, often useless, under-bench space. Here, on both sides of the center aisle, suspended under the first-level benches, are 3-foot-wide by 11-foot-long shelves. They make a good home for low-light-requirement plants, such as the handsome-foliaged rex begonias, anthuriums, and variegated ivies like Gold Dust with yellow-sprinkled leaves, and the small green-and-white-leaved Jubilee. Mature plants of a number of philodendrons, as well as cuttings of these plants, also do well under the bench. Several kinds of episcias, the blue-flowered Fanny Haage and the red-flowered Episcia cupreata, likewise grow to perfection in this low-light area. All of these can be good profit-makers.

Held-over mature tubers and bulbs in pots are rested by laying them on their sides on the ground layer of pea rock under the shelves and benches.

Greenhouse Annex

As I have said, in addition to the greenhouse we have an annex that connects the greenhouse to our house. This is really a part of the house and it provides valuable extra space. It also contains the greenhouse heating boiler, our household pump, the pressure sprayer, and a storage cabinet.

A triangular shelf, roughly 12 by 52 inches, juts out below the south windows. Under this shelf are fastened two 40-watt fluorescent tubes. Here I propagate some seedlings and root special cuttings in a clear plastic box. There is a wide doorway or opening between the greenhouse proper and the annex, so plants grown in the annex have approximately the same conditions as those in the greenhouse. Two 6-foot glass shelves are spaced across the two south-facing windows of the annex. These are fine for larger specimen plants of gloxineras, gloxinias, and amaryllis.

The storage cabinet is 6 feet high, 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. Shelves of varying heights give ample room here for storing liquid plant food, insecticides, tools, labels, and so forth.

In a utility room, which opens off the greenhouse annex, I have a large cabinet for dry fertilizers, clean pots, drainage materials, and special potting media, such as milled sphagnum moss, osmunda fiber, and vermiculite. I use the top of the cabinet counter as a potting bench. If the utility room weren’t so handy, I could use the space below the south windows in the annex to store some of these materials. This is what you may have to do. It all depends on the possibilities of your own layout.

Tags: home greenhouse

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