How do you keep tender plants alive without resorting to a greenhouse heater? Lia Leendertz has some answersOne of the things I most loved about last winter was tiptoeing down to the greenhouse at night to light the heater that kept my beloved succulents from getting frosted. The glow of the greenhouse heater made the plants look so beautiful that, often shivering away in dressing gown and wellies, I would hang about gazing at them for a few minutes, before finally dashing back indoors and diving under the duvet.So it is with no little regret that I have decided to do without the heater this year. I have been trying to make my garden into a more
organic, sustainable, wholesome place: cutting down on fuel use by using a push mower and hand tools, planting more edibles, chucking my blueberries so I don't have to buy ericaceous compost, and all such jazz. To then set up a heater filled with fossil fuels to pump CO2 out into the night, night after night, seems just a tad hypocritical, and this has been preying on my mind.But I'm not giving up on my babies. I am determined to get them through this some other way, and to that end I have been doing a major job on the greenhouse for the past few weeks. Due to a couple of cracked panes and some miserly bubblewrapping, there were a few draughty corners last year. Not so this year. I patched up the cracks and bought a whole new roll of bubblewrap, plus those fancy attachers that hold the bubblewrap away from the glass, so creating an extra layer of insulating air. I have painstakingly covered every inch of glass, overlapping generously at every seam. I have lined the base of the walls with thick layers of cardboard, and moved the table away from the sunny side, so the sun can shine on the paving and heat it up. I made a door of overlapping bubblewrap flaps that ET's captors would have been proud of and I have fleece to hurl directly over the plants when it gets really cold, and some of those fleece bags to put over the lar ...
Try our segmented RSS Feeds
