new (to me) greenhouse

[nomates]

Hi everyone ,

I'm in the process of moving an old greenhouse from my girlfriends nans house to ours .....I have made a concrete block base to screw the greenhouse to ......leaving it about 8 inches above ground level which is top soil .....


my question is ....if I put a path down the middle ...can I use either side of the path as a raised bed , putting a plank either side of the path ....with staging above (removeable).....or are there disadvantages to using the base of the greenhouse to grow from?

[coomber]

I have a path down the middle and plant straight into the sides, I haven't had any problems so far

[nomates]

cool .....the fact its a little raised ......I thought would be an oppertunity to have some slighty raised beds .........although when i saw pics on this forum of the inside of greenhouses ....many people didn't do this ...so it made me wonder why not....

cheers ..when its finished i will give it a go

[Galileo]

Yes planting in the side borders is a very good idea as it saves a lot of watering.

Pots and grow bags sometimes need watering two or even three times a day on hot days. Work in plenty of organic matter into the borders like manure or compost.

The reason some people don't use the borders is because some experts say the soil can become diseased when you grow the same crop in the same soil year after year and output can drop. Bob Flowerdew covers this in depth in his books and has grown Tomatos in his polytunnel borders for over twenty years now and only saw problems after about eighteen or ninteen years. This is because in general your crops like tomatos will only be in the greenhouse border for about half the year giving the soil half a year to recover. When you remove your plants in the autumn use a spade and remove a chunk of soil around each plant.

Changing the soil every twenty years is a lot less work than twenty years of watering pots and growbags.

Galileo

[matthew2riches]

That is exactly what I have done and have had no issues so far.

:-)

[nomates]

thanks everyone