Greenhouse for vegetables ?

[waterguy81]

Hello, I am thinking about building a green house for my vegetables and herbs.

I have to plant all my gardens in raised beds or pots. I grow vegetables, herbs, some grass and weeds for the rabbits, goats, and chickens we have.

I need help deciding if a year round greenhouse would be a good idea and if so how to build it ?

I want to build a wood frame type (shed) with a single door and put the see through plastic sheets as siding and roofing.

I know the plants need air flow so should I screen in some of it ?

also, is the sunlight through the plastic enough or do they need to be outside ?

I guess my worry is not the summer (southwest Louisiana) but the winter when I need the feed for my animals.

Thanks for any help.

 

[digitS']

Oh, you are going to have a little trouble covering enuf ground to grow a substantial amount of feed for livestock. Still, we aren't talking about a 1400 pound Holstein.

You only have a couple of months where plant growth would be much slowed by cool weather, right? What would you think about just protected growing in the garden?

You can see how simple that could be from this thread on the low tunnels that are in my backyard right now (click).

I also have what is essentially a sunshed with an insulated roof and north wall. You can see a picture here (click). There are some observations on how it does in a cold climate and a photo of my "high" tunnel, as well.

Steve

 

[patandchickens]

Frankly it would probably be a lot more efficient and economical to just *harvest* (from wild weedy areas) stuff for the chickens/goats/etc. If you don't have enough brushy or tall-grassy areas of your own, surely you could find someone who would be happy to have *theirs* kept a bit more under control?

I mean certainly you can contemplate doing it for veggies for the kitchen if you want -- I know *nothing* about greenhouse gardening in your climate though, sorry, I would suggest you see what others do locally -- but it just seems like for the animals you'd put a vast amount of money and work into it for really very little return, whereas collecting stuff for them is pretty easy and FREE

JMHO, good luck, have fun,

Pat