Reasons to Have Your Own Home Greenhouse

By: Sandra Dinkins-Wilson

You may think of a home greenhouse as mostly a glass structure used to extend your growing season. However they have a history going back centuries. In those days, a greenhouse was called a conservatory. It was used by collectors to house and grow not only exotic plants but birds and small animals as well. One could well imagine smaller monkeys being brought back to be kept in conservatories from explorations of Africa. All the new countries being discovered and explored were the sources of the exotic plants and animals that might be found in these old conservatories.

Growing food was also another benefit of the early conservatories. In fact some were used specifically to grow orange trees and called orangeries. These conservatories allowed the growing of certain foods year round much like we can today. In fact, greenhouses were used to grow food, as far as we know, all the way back to a greenhouse built by Tiberius, the Roman emperor in 30AD. He had it built to grow cucumbers and the light entered through sheets of thin mica as glass was not known in those days.

Today your typical home greenhouse will have walls and a roof of glass or some type of translucent plastic. As we all know the white light of sunlight actually consists of a whole spectrum of light in different wavelengths such as ultraviolet and infrared. Glass and some of the plastics allow the white light to enter but only certain frequencies are able to get back out.

Infrared which we sense as heat is one of the wavelengths that does not escape back out of the home greenhouse through the glass. It is this which we use to heat the air inside our structure giving us the heat we want to grow our plants.

Open your car door and get inside on a bright day full of sunshine, especially in summer, and you know all about how light can heat the inside of a structure with glass walls. Greenhouses put this principle to work.

More than just being able to provide heat within a home greenhouse, as a gardener you know light is needed for green plants to grow. This is done via photosynthesis. This is a process by way the plant absorbs and moves nutrients throughout its system allowing the plant to grow and reproduce. This of course gives us whatever we are wanting from our plants that we grow within our hothouses.

Greenhouses help us control conditions in ways we can't if our plants are placed into an outdoor garden. The effects of wind, temperature, pests, moisture, and other variables are often harder to control outside the greenhouse.

Don't only consider the utility aspect of having a home greenhouse around. Greenhouses or sun rooms as many attached greenhouses are called can add value to your home which is an important point if you build your own greenhouse. This can be with the added floor space of an addition or the delight found in the heart of the hard core gardener.

Niche Article Directory: http://www.thatsmyniche.com

Discover notes and articles about greenhouses and gardening at our domain greenhousesandgardening.com. Browse our posts about hydroponics, greenhouse kits and all types of information for your attention.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated