Well as i live with 5 other people in my house and my garden already has a shed and a wendy house in it i can only get a small green house and this walk in green house looks the perfect size for my cacti as i only have 17 but i would like your opinions, i was wondering is bendy green tinted fabric good enough because it does block out a bit of light and im only willing to pay about £50 so thts why im not buying one with glass.
Ofcourse it will be a happy growing place. A suggestion: buy two, soon you will need the room. Convince your housemates that you absolutely need for your emotional health. Harry
And my mother stresses me that i need a green house heater for winter but do i really? i dont have cold hardy speicies but i want them to flower next year.
I think your mother is right. I suppose Kent is a really wet and cold (and misty) place during winter. You can't keep them outside. About 8 degrees Celsius and corkdry, that will do. Harry
You just need to keep them above freezing, so you will need something with a built in thermostat that gives you some control. Or a seperate thermostat that allows you to control the power outlet the heater is plugged into. I use a small oscillating heater with a built in digital thermostat. And I have an 8 foot by 12 foot greenhouse. For your greenhouse you wouldn't need a very big one. From what I've read a suggested temperature is 40 to 45 degrees fahrenheit. Sorry don't know what that is in celsius.
Also there is more than cold involved in getting them to go dormant. Water them very little if at all over winter. Only water if you see them noticeably shrivelling.
I greenhoused my plants for the first time last winter and it's been a boom year for flowers.
Are you thinking about leaving them outside in that thin little greenhouse in winter? I would think if you had a cool basement rooom or something, you could move them in for the winter. If they aren't growing, you won't have to worry about light and water and such.
All Cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are Cacti
Hi Spikey, you are better off dismantling your greenhouse in winter and bringing the plants indoors. Light is not too critical so an unused bedroom or a conservatory would be ideal. The plants do not want to be too warm 45f. will be OK and do not water them from the end of October until mid March. If they do start to shrivel a little a fine spray with warm water on a warm day will perk them up.
It would cost an absolute fortune to heat a greenhouse of that type, even in a glass greenhouse most people line them with bubble wrap to help to conserve the heat inside.
Franj, you mentioned your 8x12 greenhouse. As my collection has really grown this year, I am seriously considering getting a 6x12 greenhouse for my cacti on my rooftop terrace.
My main concerns right now (not having one) are 1.) the all too often burn from too much sun too soon caused by not enough shade and 2.) the coming winter. Shade cloth has been too much of a hassle and an eyesore. It doesn’t get too cold here, but it can reach freezing for a day or two at a time (zone 9b).
I understand that available budget and space is everything, but I was wondering if anyone had a specific recommendation for the cacti hobbyist as to which brand is the best for the money and/or which features are a must for our particular type of plants.
Are you sure you want a greenhouse? Are you actually in Mexico? In your climate you need, for most species at least, protection from the rain and little else. Typically a greenhouse increases scorching and overheating problems because it reduces air movement over the plants and produces higher ambient temperatures. It would seem that you don't need the higher temperatures and do need maximum air movement. I would suggest a simple plastic roof. You can provide a light mesh or netting at the sides if you want to keep out birds and animals. Really you need to check out what local growers use, our advice from the UK and USA may not be good advice.
--ian
P.S. There will be some species where you might still need some shading. Many small cacti, even your local species in the mountains, grow with some shade from shrubs or rocks.
Thanks for the much needed reality check, ian. I think you are right about my probably not needing a greenhouse.
I guess my ideas on needing/wanting a greenhouse stem mostly from several conversations with a caretaker from a cacti nursery in not too far away Saltillo, Mexico (where it gets colder than where I live: Monterrey, Mexico) and from threads herein.
I will rethink how I can better employ shade cloth so as to create more shaded areas for newly acquired cacti and will endeavor to research my species to see which ones will have to be brought inside during our brief winter cold spells.
I will also give some thought to your suggestion as to a plastic roof of some kind, though rain really isn’t so much of a problem here as annual rainfall is rather low. It’s just hot and dry here.
Wish I had some sort of a pavillion with a solid level floor and a roof but with open sides. Then I could have complete control over water and I could relax and stop worrying about hailstorms. We had baseball sized hail on April 2 but fortunately I was still in the process of acclimating my plants to the outdoors and had brought them in for the evening. A monsterous tornado passed within a mile or so of the house and demolished a neighboring town 5 miles away.
We had storm almost identical to what you describe around the same time. One of my hardy Cylindro's got whooped on by a hailstorm.
Where in missouri do ya live if you don't mind me asking.
Spikey1007 hi there. I think what John is trying to say is that they will not survive outdoors at all, except in a glasshouse lined with bubble wrap and possibly a little heat. If you have not got room indoors anywhere, even wrapping them in news paper and putting them in a cardboard box dry out of the way, then I think you could come unstuck. Some cacti can withstand very cold temperatures, but only when they are dry and the climate is dry. With our climate, winter is a cold, dark and damp time of year with plenty of condensation...water in the winter can quite often be fatal to cacti, especially with the very low light levels. In a wendy house, I would think you would get plenty of condensation, which would cause dampness in the soil of the pot. If there is no light or very little light, plus the cold, the cacti won't grow and thus not use the water so end up possibly rotting.
walk in green house looks the perfect size for my cacti as i only have 17 but i would like your opinions, i was wondering is bendy green tinted fabric good enough because it does block out a bit of light and im only willing to pay about £50 so thts why im not buying one with glass.
