Greenhouse Gardening - Inside Our New Greenhouse!

Can you tell how excited I am to have a greenhouse in our garden?

It’s been around a six weeks since we finished building our greenhouse and it’s already filled to the brim with action! Our greenhouse has become the central hub of our garden. It’s not just a place to sow my seedlings. It’s also where I do my garden planning, somewhere to enjoy the sunshine and warmth on a cold day, and a place to store all my garden tools. Here’s a peek inside what it looks like now and how I am using it!

Welcome to our greenhouse! I’ve really loved decorating around it - it’s such a pretty little structure that I want to design it a beautiful place to live with lots of flowers surrounding it!

One thing I am loving about this design (we have the Maze 8x8 ft Grey Greenhouse) is that it has double doors. This makes it feel really spacious and so much easier to access my plants and walk in and out. Plus, when it gets hot inside, I have double the amount of doors to open to help cool it off!

In our greenhouse, I have installed a few small built-in shelves from Maze. You can see these at the back of the greenhouse in the image above. There’s also one on the right but it’s covered by my tomato seedlings. These shelves have been perfect for holding little seedling trays and really maximise the use of wall space. As they’re raised out of the way, I also sometimes use them to store my camera, notebooks and other things I use that I don’t want to get wet.

On the left side of the wall I’ve installed a couple of more heavy duty shelves. These would be great for potted vines so that they can trail down. Currently, I’m using them to hold more seedling trays as I have so many. Come summer, I might remove them temporarily as I am planning to raise some plants along this wall.

Something that I’ve found really handy is this steel bench. I built two of these to use inside the greenhouse and they have been great for keeping my baby seedlings organised. I use them to write notes, write on my plant labels and sow my seeds. The two shelves provide ample vertical space for my seedlings to grow, and they are also lightweight enough to easily move around inside. Underneath the bench there’s a good amount of space which I use to store my extra pots.

I wanted to decorate the greenhouse a bit so I hung up some solar lights inside to brighten up the space in the evening. I have heaps of these solar lights in the garden and love how bright they shine. It makes it so magical to visit at night and gives the greenhouse a real festive feel!

The beams that hold up the greenhouse roof have little grooves so that you can easily attach plant hanger hooks to it. This is how I hung up my fairy lights, but they can of course be used to hang up potted plants.

I recently picked up a bluetooth thermometer for the inside of my greenhouse so I can keep track of the temperature using my phone. If it gets too warm, I open the doors and roof vent to air it out. The roof vent currently opens via a manual arm, however I’ve seen that you can also get automatic version where it opens upon hitting a certain temperature. I think this would be a super useful upgrade to have. Come summer, there might be a chance I’ll have to keep the doors permanently open so I’m thinking of doing up a mesh screen DIY.

In the next few weeks I will be hardening off my seedlings so that they can be transplanted into the garden. Most of the plants will be planted out in our garden however I am planning on keeping some tomatoes, eggplants and capsicums to raise in the greenhouse over summer. With Melbourne having pretty hot summers, it’s going to be a challenge regulating the temperature inside but I can’t wait to see how I go! I have some shade cloth ready to go to help keep the temperatures cool, and will be planting out a living shade wall using beans, if possible. It’ll be my first year growing in my greenhouse, so fingers crossed it all works out.

I’m also thinking just how beautiful it would be to have a little set of table and chairs inside this greenhouse. In winter, when less is going on, it would be so lovely to sit inside and enjoy the warmth.

I can’t wait to see where this greenhouse takes me in my gardening adventures. It’s been such a joy to set up, decorate and use!