The picture above is a temporary greenhouse that Graham made soon after we moved here. That year, we grew squash, beans and cucumbers under that cover. For the permanent greenhouse, Graham wanted to reuse those roof panels that you see in the picture.

The roof panels were in two pieces. When it came to deciding where to site the permanent greenhouse, we had some thinking to do. In the end, we decided to build the new greenhouse right on top of the oldest compost pile. Why create extra work for ourselves?

This way it would be easy to rake out, take away the excess, and leave some really awesome soil underneath the plants.

Right next to the site, we had a second pile of well composted manure. Nice and easy to move into the new greenhouse!

First, we framed up the one wall.

Then another and another and voila. The basic frame was ready.

Next, we worked on framing in the walls.

Can you see where we laid logs inside where we needed to level the site out? You know why logs are good? Because they are FREE. Then I started raking smooth all the compost and also adding the great soil from the pile in the back.

The compost that wasn’t quite ready, I just shovelled onto the other compost pile. Siting the greenhouse right here was a LOT less work in the end. Of course, we had put the piles in a good spot to begin with! Nice and close to the garden and far enough to the edge of the lawn that they weren’t under the trees.

You can really see the lay of the land we were working with. See the slope? And that middle hump inside the greenhouse is the left over pile of finished compost.

Over time, I raked that over to the edges to fill out the raised beds inside.

Here’s a better picture of the log details.

Once that was done, we started working on putting the roof panels in place. Graham put a great pitch on the roof and it should hopefully be able to withstand all the snow in the winter.

Later, we stapled the plastic poly around the sides. We stapled it very well, so the wind couldn’t catch the plastic and start lifting it off.

We just used 6mm plastic off a roll that we had laying around for a building project. Some people prefer to get greenhouse weight plastic.

 Since the bottom areas of the front had open spaces, I played around with building rock faces on either side. Easy and FREE!

And here’s what it looks like from the porch – we are very happy with the way it turned out. It was a fair bit of work, but it will add a LOT to our homestead.

This greenhouse has enabled us to grow peppers and tomatoes. If you live in a northern climate, you really can’t go wrong building a greenhouse.

Want to learn more about building your own greenhouse? Using basic tools, you save a lot of money building your own, as opposed to buying a new greenhouse. Build your own for about $300, including electricity – extend your growing season, start your own seeds and grow your own organic food!

The cost for ours was well under $200, even if we would have had  to buy that roll of plastic.

Want to read all our posts about growing in a greenhouse? Find out why I always transplant tomato plants before planting them again into the greenhouse. Ever wondered just how small of a pot is needed to grow peppers that actually set peppers?