There is nothing to beat gardening as a hobby. You get all the exercise you need, and can tear up the health club card. By digging the ground, weeding and pruning, there is always something needing to be done. It is also an unrivalled stress and tension reliever. Not only will gardening make you live longer, it will make you look younger and keep you healthier.
Gardening as a hobby is available to everyone. If you are confined to a wheelchair, then raised beds will let you grow and tend plants. Highly scented, or brightly coloured plants can make it an enjoyable jobby for those with fading eyesight. With a Greenhouse, you can enjoy the hobby all year round, and even in bad weather.
There is nothing as satisfying as eating a tomato or carrot which you have grown from seed. Think about the satisfaction of sinking your teeth into an apple picked from a tree that you have raised from a cutting. Although you can do these things without a greenhouse, having a greenhouse makes it so much easier. You will get even more satisfaction by building your own greenhouse
With a greenhouse you should have a pest and disease-free, controlled environment. Therefore, raising plants from seeds is much easier. In temperate and cold climates it also allows you to grow plants you would not otherwise be able to grow, such as tropical flowers and melons and grapes. It is also possible to be harvesting crops all year round.
The most important aspect of greenhouse gardening is to keep the house free of pests and diseases. There is nothing worse that have a cucumber growing beautifully one day, looking forward to harvesting it in three days time, then coming back the next day to find it totally decimated by virus or mould. There are a number of simple preventative measures that will help you to avoid that bad experience with greenhouse problems. Remember, prevention is better than cure.
First is scrupulous cleanliness. If you see damaged plant material, such as a leaf with a dirty white or grey mould; pick it off immediately and burn it. If you have used secateurs to cut off the material, then dip them in disinfectant before using them on another plant, otherwise you could just spread the mould around. Sounds simple, but many people forget this and worry that the mould is indemic.
Good ventilation will help prevent a great many of the problems.Humidity control is also greatly beneficial to controlling some greenhouse problems. There are also parasiitic mites which you can also introduce which will cure this problem.
When you have pests or deseases, try not to introduce harsh chemicals to cure them. The residue will last long after you have cropped the infected plants and could cause illness. Organic and Biological controls are generally to be favoured. Many cures are totally safe to use, such as yellow sticky cards hung in the greenhouse to catch flying pests that are greatly attracted to them. A less messy way of curing white fly, however is to introduce biological control in the form of a parasitic wasp.
But don't be deterred from greenhouse gardening by pest and disease problems. Most people who have greenhouses experience very little in the way of problems, and those they do have are minor enough to be easily cured with very little intervention.
You can even live with some pests rather than intervening, unless of course the maximum amount of cropping matters to you.
