Even Florida is not warm and sunny all the time.  The winter season in the Florida Panhandle can experience temperatures in the 20′s F.  Since my garden has grown exponentially over the last two seasons, I wasn’t too keen on putting a bunch of outdoor pots inside the house over winter (who knows all the bugs and spiders that could have made homes in those pots of dirt).   I knew that an alternative had to be found, so after much forethought and deliberation, a green house idea was born.

The formation of the greenhouse was a trial and error design method.  We had some criteria for making the greenhouse, 1) wanted to use supplies we had lying around, 2) wanted to make it able to stand on its own, 3) wanted to make it collapsible and transportable.  Sometimes you just need to get out there with materials and start fitting them together and one idea leads to another and finally you’ve figured it out.  That’s pretty much what happened with this design.

The weather has been so nice that I haven’t needed to cover the green house with Visqueen yet.  For the nights that do get close to freezing we cover the poles with tarp which is taken off again in the morning.  I was not aware that Visqueen was so opaque, I was hoping for a more transparent covering allowing the most amount of sunlight in.

The Visqueen was put on the greenhouse before we left for the holiday break, as some nights would get at or below freezing.