Grow Your Own Magazine

Me and OH will be starting to build our greenhouse soon.
The bottom of it will be brick, with a wooden frame (as made by OH), the size of it is 12 feet by 8 feet. (yes it`s quite big). The door is in the middle of one od the long sides with cold frames either side. (The same as Alan Titchmarshes).
My question is what should we use for the floor inside. Should we have a brick or slab path with soil either side or should we have slabs.
Any ideas would be much appreached.
Sharon.

It depends what you want to do in there. If you want to plant directly into the soil , a slab path up the middle would be best. Mine gets waterlogged easily, so I've put gravel over the whole lot, then slabs up the centre to make a more stable path. Then I put everything into pots, and nestle them into the gravel. Seems to be working fine. Easy to damp down, the gravel seems to retain the moisture better than if I had paved the whole lot.

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I could not live without a garden, it is my place to unwind and recover, to marvel at the power of all growing things, even weeds!

http://potagerplot.blogspot.com/

*our* greenhouse has a concrete floor (it was there already) and gets horribly covered in green algae in the winter. We'd prefer gravel, but concrete is what we got.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

I have gravel throughout but a lot of people have soil borders. My brother, for example has a soil border on one side and flags over the rest of it. He also has about a 4" kerb against the border side in order to retain the soil. You do however need to dig out the soil every couple of years so as it remains full of nutrients and so that you don't harbour diseases.

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Some of us live in the past, always talking about back then. Some of us live in the future, always planning what we are going to do. And, then there are those, who neither look behind or ahead, but just enjoy the moment of right now.

Which one are you and is it how you want to be?

You say the bottom will be brick? Mine is sandstone up to 2 foot 6 inches high and along one side I have built a similarily sized retaining wall inside giving me in effect a raised bed.
This gives me two options, I can either grow in the raised bed which has the benefit of warming the soil a little, or I can board the top at certain times of the year and use it as staging.
The rest of the floor is paving flags!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Thanks for the ideas. I like the idea of raised beds and gravel.

If you have a solid floor you will be able to flood it to raise humidity, and lower temperature. But you'll have to grow everything in pots ...

I'm greedy and have both a "growing" greenhouse, everything in the soil, or in pots on the soil, and a "staging" greenhouse - with a solid floor - used for propaging, and growing things in pots.

Likewise!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Sounds good.