Why Have a Home Greenhouse?

A home greenhouse are nothing new. They used to be known as conservatories and were used to house and grow all the wonderful and new plants being brought back to Europe, and especially England, during the age of exploration and beyond. Some even housed exotic birds and animals brought back from these expeditions.

These conservatories were used to grow food as well as house exotic specimens from around the world. They allowed the Europeans to have such delicacies as oranges that would be grown in an orangery (or orangerie), so called as that was their specific purpose as a greenhouse. Even as long ago as 30AD, a greenhouse was built to provide cucumbers for the Roman Emperor Tiberius. As glass manufacturing had not been discovered yet, light entered their form of a greenhouse through sheets of mica. Even early American pioneers used thin sheets of mica to allow light into their homes well into the 19th century as glass was still expensive and hard to transport across the country then.

Greenhouses today use glass and certain translucent plastics to make up their walls and roofs. Glass and these plastics allow the whole light spectrum to pass through into your structure. However, they also prevent all of the different types of light waves from passing back through the walls and roofs.

You know about infrared and how that is a heat source within light. When something, you for instance, give off heat, we can see it through special glasses. Likewise, this wavelength of light can be used to heat up our greenhouses or conservatories.

The combined effect of bringing in all that light energy, while only part of it escapes, causes the temperature to tend to be higher inside than out. Anyone sitting in a closed car in the summer sun is familiar with the effect. That's why greenhouses sometimes are called hothouses.

More than just being able to provide heat within a home greenhouse, as a gardener you know light is needed for green plants to grow. This is done via photosynthesis. This is a process by way the plant absorbs and moves nutrients throughout its system allowing the plant to grow and reproduce. This of course gives us whatever we are wanting from our plants that we grow within our hothouses.

Greenhouses help us control conditions in ways we can't if our plants are placed into an outdoor garden. The effects of wind, temperature, pests, moisture, and other variables are often harder to control outside the greenhouse.

Beyond all these aspects of greenhouses, they can simply be incredibly beautiful additions to our landscaping whether bought as a kit, you have someone build it for you or you build your own greenhouse. Whether a stand alone architectural wonder or a lovely room-expanding addition to the home, a home greenhouse makes for envious gardeners wherever they are found.

Browse our notes and articles about greenhouses and gardening at our domain greenhousesandgardening.com. Browse our posts about hydroponics, greenhouse kits and all types of information for your perusal.

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Why Have a Home Greenhouse?
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