We have finally settled into our new house, and we have a brand new Alton greenhouse which we have used for the first time this season.

This being so I thought it was about time I told you a little about what we have done with the greenhouse, The greenhouse itself is 18 feet by 10 feet in size and contains a partition two thirds of the way in. This is so that we can attempt to keep the small section at the end heating during winter to hopefully carry on growing some plants.

While the rest of the greenhouse is used to over winter our other plants. I have currently removed the partition door to allow easy access to all areas of the greenhouse during summer.

The greenhouse took 3 of us approximately 1 and a half days to build, It all went suprisingly smoothly. Partly due to the well constructed Alton panels.

As you can see on the picture the greenhouse has 3 automatic opening vents, These were  an extra cost to have but save lots of time as you just set the temperature on the back and they automatically push the vents open and close when necessary without any intervention, They work by having a piston type mechanism with fluid which expands when the temperature increases therefore pushing the vent open. They even close automatically when the wind gets too much. (Not quite sure how they do this).

The greenhouse also contains 6 side vents which can be manually opened, Some thought has been put into the design of these as they can be opened from the outside which is great as I don’t need to interfere with the plants to open and shut these.

I have even got a system inside the house configured which tells me via speakers whether I need to open any of these vents in the morning. For more details about this check out my automation page.

To add to the natural ventilation I have installed two fans, One in each of the partitions. These are run most of the day as long as the temperature is not too low.

They also run sometimes during the night to make sure the air still moves during the night to avoid any mold or deseases which can occur on the plants due to stale air. These are controlled via a PC I have setup for automated things around my greenhouse and within our house.

You can also see in the photo the greenhouse lights I have installed.

I have also made up electrical outlets in each corner of the greenhouse, These are all weather proof ones which are ideal for the greenhouse environment. At each corner I have a timed connection available and constant power. This allows me to connect any pumps I require to run continuosly or timed for different types of Hydroponic configurations I might want to try.

My plan in this greenhouse is to have several permanent hydroponic systems and a little extra space for playing and designing other systems. I chosen to use Nutriculture systems as they are actually built not too far away from myself and also they quite often have good discounts available.

Currently I have two large NFT tanks setup in the main greenhouse partition, One is mostly going to be used for tomatoes and the other mostly for cucumbers. Although this year we have had too many cucumbers to cope with so I’ll probably be changing this next year.

The tanks themselves are Nutriculture GT901 gro tanks, Each of these are approximately 83 inches long and hold a tank volume of 80 Litres. As they are quite large they can stay running for quite a while before needing to be topped up.

The photo to the right shows the left hand GT901 tank at the start of the season, At the back you can see the electrical outlets and timer I am using. Also to the right of the picture you can see one of my aeroponic propagators, I will be putting more information about this propagator on the web site shortly.

These gro tanks come as a kit including pump etc to get going straight away, The pump has even been redesigned slightly to include an air intake, This allows you to add extra air/oxygen into the nutrient solution by simply adjusting a control attached to the pump.

As well as these two tanks I have setup 3 other tanks inside the hot partition, I am using these to grow various types of peppers including sweet ones, jalapenos and various types of chilli peppers.

Unfortunately I think I have planted too many plants inside each of the tanks this year as they are quite a bit overcrowded as you can see from the photo’s. Which doesn’t help to allow the Peppers to ripen.

The tanks which I am using here are all Nutriculture gro tanks again, The first one is an old 205 gro tank which I have been using since I started hydroponic growing and you can see it on my other previous web pages. I also have a small new GT205i gro tank and also a slightly larger GT424 tank.

The left hand side of the hot partition showing the GT205i, You can just see my old 205 gro tank on the bottom right.

The right hand side of the partition showing the slightly larget GT424 tank on the right and the old 205 gro tank on the left, The GT424 is growing a mix of chilli and jalapenos.

The final system which I have been playing with in the greenhouse is a self made NFT system which consists of 4 pieces of guttering which have a nutrient solution fed into them at the top which then feed back into the tank at the bottom to start the cycle again.

My intention was to fill the guttering with clay pebbles as a medium and then sit strawberry plants into this medium.

Unfortunately I was a little too careful not to place the crown of the plant deep into the medium and did not place the plants roots deep enough into the medium to allow the plants to soak up the nutrients.

This made the plants very week and during a spate of high temperature they pretty much died. I did manage to keep alive one plant though which I potted on and grew in a normal pot. I carried on using the system though to give a bit more space to a couple of my chilli pepper plants which quite happily grew on.