How to Cultivate Vegetables in the Winter With Greenhouse Gardening

Veggies can be grown any time of year when you make use of greenhouse vegetable gardening methods. Growing vegetables greenhouse style is nearly the same as producing them from a garden outside in the summer. You just have to supplement what nature supplies that a greenhouse can’t.

There are two different methods of making use of a portable greenhouse. One is known as the cold greenhouse technique and that is when only the sun throughout the day gives the greenhouse its heat. The temperature at nighttime typically goes down to about 45 degrees at the coldest and heat does kick on when it gets very cold outside. No growing occurs in this type of greenhouse, but you can maintain many plants that will come back in the summertime such as rosemary.

Raising vegetables during the winter requires warmth so the warm method is the one to use here. Garden greenhouses need to maintain a temperature of at least 55 degrees F in order for the plants to grow and entail a heating unit. Heating units can be gas, electric or propane.

There is scarcely a vegetable that can be grown in a garden that can’t be grown in a greenhouse. Look in seed catalogs to find seeds specifically developed for greenhouse use. If you cannot find those get plants that maintain a compact size or that can be pruned back to be smaller than the outdoor plants. There’s little room in a greenhouse and you do not want it to be used up with merely a few kinds of vegetables.

Among the things you need to offer your greenhouse vegetables besides heat is pollination. You won’t find any bees or other insects in your greenhouse that you would in the outdoors. A great example is raising tomatoes. Tie tomatoes to bamboo stakes and once the flowers appear tap the stakes once in the morning and once at night. Do this when you see that the flower petals are curving backwards. You will need to watch every day since you just have a three day window of time that the flower petals will do this.

Since there’s not a great deal of sunlight during the wintertime you need to add sunlight by using grow lights. Most vegetables need a minimum of eight hours of light a day. Obviously, the plants will also need to be watered and fertilized on a regular basis.

Greenhouse gardening during the winter is a bit more challenging and takes more time than in the summer, but it is also rewarding. You can go to the greenhouse on a snowy day in January and harvest a vine ripened tomato. You can have that summer filled flavor any time of the year.

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