Tips for Solar Greenhouse Gardening

In a greenhouse garden, plants are grown with proper care and maintenance. This method provides effective ways for quickly growing healthy plants. You can grow seasonal plants anytime throughout the year. Solar greenhouse gardening serves something more. It collects the solar energy from the sun and stores it to use during night time, cloudy days or in cold season. It provides adequate amount of heat for plants growth. Creating a good solar greenhouse is not that easy. You need to know about the right techniques to get better solar collection. This will keep your plants happy and healthy for a longer time.

 Effective Techniques:-

Solar greenhouse is classified into passive and active type. They both use different resources, but serve the same purpose for providing solar heat. Passive solar greenhouse is the most effective technique. It is the easiest and inexpensive way to provide solar heat. Despite of the weather conditions, it raises a good productivity. During the day time, sun’s heat is deposited and stored in the thermal-mass heat sink. This heat radiates out to keep the greenhouse warm at night. For this you need to incorporate more physical or thermal mass into the greenhouse.

Thermal solar mass is created by the help of large rocks, water filled steel drums, and cement filled cinder block piles of rocks. The wall to which these items are attached, act as a great solar heat storing thermal mass. It holds the solar energy throughout the day and radiates the heat at night. Using black plastic in water container will be a good option to collect heat. It will absorb most of the radiation and transfer it to the water. 

Using reflective surface is a good way to capture more solar heat. Install reflective materials inside the greenhouse. This will raise the amount of trapped heat. It’s better to place the greenhouse towards the southern part. It will let all of the light get into the greenhouse. Paint the northern side of the greenhouse wall with reflective coats. This will trap more solar energy and reflect it back inside the greenhouse. This energy will be stored in the thermal solar storage masses.

Proper insulation is also an important part of solar greenhouse. An insulated covering will retain the heat for a time when needed. Insulate the northern wall by using good insulation materials. You can use two or three inch thick fiberglass batting which will act well on the northern wall.