The Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book
The
Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book is similar to Mike Oehler's The
$50 Underground House Book, with all of the usual
self-published pros and cons. I was a bit more disappointed in
the greenhouse book than in the earlier text because I felt the former
used large print to extend the page count, and the typos were a little
excessive. But it was interesting to see how the author built a
greenhouse for $400 using the same techniques he uses to make
underground houses. (He estimates a greenhouse built using his
methods and new supplies would instead cost about $1,250 for a
32-square-foot grow area.) And I enjoyed the copious
illustrations and the anecdotes about happenings at Rainbow Gatherings.
On the other hand,
Oehler is clearly more of a builder than he is a gardener. His
greenhouse book is full of theory, but when it comes to the practical
elements, it turns out he's only getting about as much out of his
greenhouse as we do out of our quick
hoops.
Granted, I estimate Oehler lives about one zone colder than us, but if
I were to build a greenhouse, I'd want it to do more than provide kale
for the winter and tomatoes in early December. Still, I found
some greenhouse-building tips to regale you with for the rest of the
week, so stay tuned.
 This post is part of our Earth-Sheltered Solar Greenhouse lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
I purchased this book last year, as we are intending to build a partially underdround greenhouse. We have the perfect south-south east facing slope for this type of structure. I liked a lot of the pictures and diagrams of various designs, however I was less than enthused about some of the building methods (putting posts inside plastic bags for rot protection for example). I think for me personally if expend all the effort to build an earthsheltered greenhouse I want it to last. I am not sure yet what that means for the greenhouse that I will build, time will tell. I did particularly like the very short section (two paragraphs matbe) that discussed using a long section of buried pipe to heat the greenhouse by pulling air in from the outside via the underground pipe.