The Essential Structure for Gardening Even in The Harshest Winters - Modular, and Adaptable Greenhouses

Greenhouses are essential to gardening in temperate zones.

That is one of our mantras for this climate.

In the previous newsletter, we explained why that is and revealed that there are many sustainable, efficient, and self-sufficient greenhouse designs. We showed a design intended to attach to a farmhouse or a "bio-shelter" (as the creator of the design put it), as well as a 20 m² greenhouse that attaches to a house or apartment located in a densely populated city, like Berlin.

Of course, you can take the principles we exposed and modify the design to your liking, creating your own sustainable practice that connects you with gardening.

This edition will deal with free-standing greenhouses, meaning they can be built not attached to any previous structure and, as a matter of fact, can be the first structure to which you anchor your garden.

They are adaptable and modular, giving you amazing freedom to develop your practice.

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In this edition, in 6 minutes or less:

#1 Free-Standing Greenhouses: Hot Beds, Animal heated greenhouses, and mini greenhouses (cloches)

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Free-Standing Greenhouses

These designs can be deployed anywhere without prior infrastructure and serve as the foundation of a garden even where no infrastructure previously existed.

Hot Beds

This is an ancient practice that, according to legend, was invented as soon as humanity domesticated animals and noticed that the pile of manure if left piled started to steam and warm up.

The Romans under Tiberius (42BC-37AD) refined it to successfully grow vegetables for massive populations more than 2,000 years ago in the extremely cold regions of their empire. This technique was still broadly used in Europe until the 19th century. The French mastered the technique most thoroughly, using it until WWII to grow food in Paris in February amidst the snow. Today, Jack First is the most proficient gardener in this technique and helped keep this knowledge from being lost (check out his book Hot Beds). As a matter of fact, he relies on this technique for his commercial operation.

It is a sustainable practice that fits very well in temperate climates. I understand it as a compost-heated, adaptable greenhouse. It relies on creating composting piles that generate heat in a slow, controlled way, providing warmth to crops during the 3–4 cold months before spring - between January and April in northern hemisphere (this technique differs from the fast compost recipe that creates fertile soil in 18 days, and the also fast “on steroid” chicken method, which we have written about previously). At the end of the process, you harvest a crop and fertile soil. It relies solely on the construction of the pile (components and form) plus a frame placed on top of it. It serves both as a nursery and as a greenhouse for growing.

With it, you can literally start a garden anywhere even off grid.

Following the series on home gardening in temperate climates (and concluding our series on home gardening in all climate zones) I will write a detailed newsletters series on growing crops using Hot Beds.

Animal-Heated Greenhouses

Animals produce a lot of body heat, and traditionally, people built stables attached to the house or housed animals under their homes to profit from it.

Bill Mollison designed an animal-heated greenhouse where the animal housing is elegantly integrated with the greenhouse. It is multifunctional, fusing two structures that require frequent visits into one, while enhancing their individual functions. We have already explored this design with a focus on a nursery. In just 10 m², you can supply a 1,000 m² garden with plants. In our previous newsletter, we explained the construction, which animals can be housed there, and how to operate the heated greenhouse.

This design requires building a shed, so it takes more effort than hot beds, but it unlocks animal husbandry, which is the pinnacle of complexity in gardening and farming.

As it functions completely off-grid, you can start a garden anywhere and develop your own practice around it.

Mini Greenhouses (Cloches)

These are individual greenhouses for each plant.

The term “cloches” comes from the French word for “bell,” alluding to the original shape of the device: a bell-shaped glass dome placed over individual plants. They have been used since ancient times in the form of lean-tos, and as glass bells in 16th–17th century France. Although they don’t offer a systematic solution, they can prove invaluable because they are easy to deploy and flexible.

They are the personification of the idea of creating microclimates. They can be inverted glass jugs, or moveable plastic or glass frames in various shapes. Other possible mini-greenhouses include rock walls, or semicircles made of rocks or tires facing the sun, covered with plastic or glass. The ancient Chinese used lean-tos made out of bamboo and straw facing the sun, allowing snowfall to accumulate on the shaded side for insulation.

If you think about it, it is actually the frame component of the hot beds. The main difference is that there is no heating element, and they are normally for individual plants or a small bed.

It is a “personalized,” very flexible device for one or a couple of plants.

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A word of caution:

In the search for the ultimate, free, feasible, and sustainable greenhouse solution, we can commit an excess that creates a setback.

The most common thought pattern among gardeners who are free thinkers is to use their living room as a greenhouse, but that doesn’t work well enough:

• It becomes an annoyance after a couple of months because you lose your living room.
• The plants grow sideways toward the window, so you have to keep turning them, which adds a lot of work (if you allow this to happen, they will grow into a shape not fit for the outdoors).
• Placing full-spectrum UV LED lights above the plants solves the previous problem; this is the same technique commercial growers use to grow without “full sun” (inside or on a windowsill). However, if you install such lights in your living room, you must find a way to shield the lights to prevent you from looking directly at them, as UV LED lights for plant growth can damage your eyes. Consequently, your house stops being a cozy place to live in.

I know this because my wife and I tried this in our first growing season, imagining that our living room would turn out like a seedling nursery jungle. While it was fun at the beginning, everything started to go south when the plants got a little bigger. The experience taught me the lesson that this does not work in the long run (although it was a legitimate first step from which we learned a lot).

All in all, there are other sustainable ways of building a greenhouse without sacrificing any inhabited room of your house, either attached to your home or separate from it. This allows you to develop a real sustainable practice, gain your first experience, or build solid infrastructure for a bolder garden.

Don’t forget to insulate the floor inside the walls from the earth outside; otherwise, it will suck all the heat from the greenhouse.

See you next Tuesday!

Alexandre and Marina

Sources: Mollison, Bill, Remi M. Slay. Introduction to Permaculture, Tagari Publication, 1991, pages 112-116, 154, figure 5.19, figure 7.8