Greenhouse climate management involves providing plants with the right conditions for growth, flowering and fruiting. What you should do therefore depends on the type of plants you are growing and the stage they are at in their life cycle.
Not all plants need exactly the same conditions, so the type of climate will depend on what you plan to grow in a greenhouse. Some will need high temperatures and high humidity in the greenhouse. Others will need slightly cooler conditions in the greenhouse.
It is often possible to compromise and provide conditions that will work for most of your plants most of the time. You will not be able to provide optimal conditions for all the plants in your greenhouse. However, selecting plants that like similar conditions will give you acceptable results.
For the hobby greenhouse grower, some compromises are necessary. If you're growing commercially, that's another matter. A commercial greenhouse must provide the optimum climate for a particular type of plant. Otherwise, you will lose money.
A fan who devotes himself to a particular genre must make difficult choices. It may be necessary to sacrifice variety for quality. If your greenhouse is for orchids and orchids only, you can provide the best climatic conditions. If you want to grow other types of plants, you will only have to build another greenhouse.
For most gardeners, such difficult decisions are unnecessary. It is possible to provide a more or less suitable climate for many plants. You may also find that you can subdivide part of the greenhouse to create a microclimate. The climate of one part of the greenhouse can then be warmer or more humid than the rest.
In the temperate part of the planet where the growing season is relatively long, an unheated greenhouse is often possible. An unheated greenhouse depends on sunlight and residual heat stored in the ground to create a warmer climate than outside.
environment. This is enough to grow seeds and to grow vegetables like tomatoes in the summer.
Regulating the climate in an unheated greenhouse mainly involves ensuring that there is enough humidity to avoid pests like whiteflies and red mites and adequate ventilation to avoid mold and botrytis. The lower the temperature, the lower the humidity should be. Air cannot hold much moisture at low temperatures and mold will result if the greenhouse is not properly ventilated.
Providing some heat will allow for a longer growing season. If the greenhouse is heated in winter, it will be possible to provide frost-free space for tender plants that live outside in summer. A small amount of heat will create a greenhouse climate in which some salads can be grown.
The easiest way to have a frost-free greenhouse is the old-fashioned way of placing a candle in a large flowerpot with another on top. The plant pots heat up and continue to give off heat all night long. Your greenhouse will be frost-free to several degrees of frost. If you intend to keep the greenhouse warm all day, or if your area's climate is very cold in winter, you will need to invest in a more sophisticated form of heating. Electric heating is by far the best option. It can be thermostatically controlled to produce exactly the climate you need.
Electric heating is expensive, but you can reduce heat loss by insulating your greenhouse with bubble wrap. This is the same type of material used for packaging. You can buy it in large leaves from gardeners. When cut inside the greenhouse, it creates a double-glazed environment.
Greenhouse insulation allows you to maintain higher temperatures in your greenhouse. But you need to be careful with humidity. Ventilation will still be necessary. Ventilating the greenhouse in the middle of the day will control the indoor climate. There are cheaper heating methods but any type of combustion inevitably produces gases that are harmful to plants. Better to avoid it. If you have a lot of wood, you can consider a wood stove. Instead of placing such a stove directly in the greenhouse, it would be better to use it as a central heating stove and run hot water through your greenhouse.
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