Sunil We’ve been lucky with the weather at the weekends recently as although it’s been cold, there’s been sunshine, so I took the opportunity to put up the temporary winter greenhouse on the patio as the temperatures at night drop into single figures.
It was a bit of a tight squeeze to fit all the plants in. There’s a plethora of seed trays, cuttings, young plants, mature plants, pots, bulbs and climbers all sheltering inside and all will hopefully over-winter, protected from the worst of the coming weather.
It looks like a jam-packed green oasis and in the depths of a stark bare winter it might provide a welcome relief to come into this space and see all this greenery huddled together. The summer and autumn sown seeds are in their respective greenhouses (foreground left and right) and the daffodil bulbs are now safely in the ground too. I also managed to pot on several young plants and after that, there’s really not much to do other than odd spot-jobs.
The Strelitzia and a pot of Himalayan blue bamboo will be coming inside the house. I did wonder whether to risk them in the greenhouse but I ran out of room there before I could make my mind up. Being unheated, I do expect the temperature inside to touch freezing if we go through a particularly cold spell, but my experiences of previous winters with the small plastic greenhouses tells me that this may only happen perhaps once or twice.
My plants are snuggled up and now I’m snuggled up, both getting ready for winter dormancy.
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Interesting, I have been tempted by these small plastic greenhouses but didn’t know how much I could rely on their performance. I put some things in a cold frame last year which worked ok but the senettis and pelargoniums didn’t really do well. I have learned since they need to be heated. The other problem with the cold frame was that everything got very dry and as I wasn’t in gardening mode, nothing got watered!
Hi Claire, the plastic greenhouses work really well for me, they’re like factories that just churn out seed trays and young plants. I wouldn’t be able to look after half the plants I do without them. They extend the growing season, I’d say that given you can get them pretty cheaply these days it’s well worth trying it out.
That greenhouse does look very cozy. I just wish my winter “dormancy” meant I didn’t have to struggle through freezing weather and snowstorms.
Hopefully this winter will be much more civilised than previous ones with regards to bad weather. Unfortunately, there’s no room to squeeze a deck-chair inside, but it is cosy. I have noticed that some of the plants on the floor are in the dark. I might have to try propping those up on pots to get them into the light.
Sunil, how about a bar stool in your cozy greenhouse? At least you could sit for a while and breathe in the pleasures of the garden.
We had almost no winter at all last year but the weather guessers are predicting a bad one. So we have splashed out and installed a whole house generator. Our neighbors said the power can go out for a week or more if we have a great deal of snow and ice. Of course now that we’ve done it we’ll probably never have snow again!
Hi Lynn,
That would be lovely wouldn’t it? I’ve found that it gets very humid in there, there’s lots of water. If I tap on the roof a few times I can make it rain inside! I’ll have to watch out for moulds and mildews. It’s good that you’ve cancelled winter with your whole-house generator, you should tell everyone around you not to even bother with snow shovels and chains!