More Light, Please.

Sometimes the ideal organic garden site has everything a grower could ask for. 

It’s level. Close to the kitchen. Just a few feet away from a water source.

It’s only missing one thing : enough sunlight.

Without a minimum of  four hours of direct sunlight, edible varieties  - even leafy greens, like kale, spinach and chard - just can’t hit their stride. Seeds sown in an under-lighted organic garden may sprout when the soil temperature has warmed up enough - perhaps giving their grower a brief rush of excitement. But this excitement is short-lived. Without enough sunlight,  those seedlings stretch into spindly, weak stalks, with unimpressive pale coloring and sad little leaves ; an easy target for insect pests and certain heartbreak if their grower ever had dreams of slicing large tomatoes in mid summer.

Jessica Betz and Juergen Fehr  had this very dream - an organic garden filled with sturdy, robust, edible plant varieties laden with their yield. dreams when they began working in the existing organic garden at the home they purchased in Davidson - just north of Charlotte. 

And no one would blame them for being unrealistic daydreamers, either.  The home’s previous owners had made no small effort at building an attractive raised bed layout that included a large L-shaped raised bed with a rectangle shaped raised bed nestled beside it.

Pea stone pathways between and around the raised beds helped the organic garden blend into to the home’s beautifully designed landscape.

A kitchen window looked right out onto the organic garden -  which was only a few paces from the kitchen counter. 

Nearby, a garden hose was neatly coiled up at a spigot on the side of the house, - at the ready,  if the automated drip irrigation system ever needed a hand.

This organic garden seemed to have everything we look for ; the important items,  near the top of the site selection checklist. And at first, their garden even seemed to have enough sunlight - item number one on any organic garden site selection checklist.

Juergen and Jessica’s seeds did sprout. In spring, their  seedlings showed the encouraging signs of new growth that every grower hopes for. But by mid summer - when several towering poplar and other hardwood trees that soared high above the garden had fully leaved in - the garden’s sunlight was essentially reduced to a paltry, filtered, indirect light - not nearly enough sunlight for a thriving organic garden.

To make matters worse, without the needed sunlight, their garden’s soil, ( which was a premium organic planting mix with excellent drainage and aeration ) seemed to always stay soggy, never fully drying out after heavy rains. 

The plants struggled, and soon became easy targets for insect pests.

Dreams of strong, hardy plants - sagging with the weight of their summer harvest - were beginning to dim. 

But not for long.

Because Juergen and Jessica had an idea...a clever solution that would keep the dream alive.

There was no question that the existing garden site was still the most ideal location on the property to grow edible varieties organically - for all the reasons mentioned earlier.

We just needed was more light. A lot more light, and more control over the growing environment.

How would we possibly pull this off? 

 

By building a cedar-framed greenhouse on the garden site, that included supplemental lighting inside, along with cedar garden beds with drip irrigation... and an automated ventilation system to help create the perfect growing environment inside.

But, consider that the couple’s home sits elegantly at the edge of a pond, in a refined golf course community in Davidson. This greenhouse had to to have the polish and visual appeal to meet or exceed the high aesthetic standard that was already in place in the home’s exiting landscape design. 

 

Luckily for us, Juergen is a native of Austria and an engineer by trade. He soon delivered a precise concept and a clear explanation of exactly what he wanted.

After carefully measuring the area - being careful to allow for ample room to walk around all four sides of the greenhouse -  we settled on a structure measuring 12’ wide,  20’ long and around 10’ tall, at the top of he ridge beam. In order to help the greenhouse ‘nestle’ discreetly into the site ( which sits right beside a covered walkway that leads from a detached garage to the back door of the couple’s home ) Juergen stressed that the height of the greenhouse  should be around the same height as the top edge of the rain gutters on the garage, which were about 10’ from the ground. 

 

This yielded a much lower roof pitch than the standard 45 degree gable greenhouse roof we normally build. And to ensure that this lower-pitched roof would easily handle all the snow, wind, and ice that Nature could heap on it, we would have to build an extra sturdy roof frame, when the time came.

And so we get the project underway and it was admittedly with a touch of sadness that we removed the existing cedar garden beds and raked out their soil along with the pea pebbles into a level site. With this first step completed we measured again to ensure a clearance of about 4’ between the back side of the greenhouse and detached garage, and about a foot from the walkway to the 20’ side facing the house.

We marked the greenhouse footprint on the ground with orange paint and confirmed that the front gable wall of the greenhouse would allow enough room for easy access to the greenhouse, and for the greenhouse door to easily open and close without damaging the existing landscape plants.

The first step in the construction process was to build and install a base made with two courses of 4”x4” red cedar timbers, joined together with 6” structural steel screws. To help protect the greenhouse base from termites and other insects, we applied several coats of WoodLife CreoCoat Black to the portions of the cedar timbers with ground contact.

 

With the greenhouse base level, square, and plumb, the next step was to build and install both 20’-long sidewalls. The sidewalls in this design combined red cedar 2x4 sole and cap plates with red cedar 4”x4” studs spaced about 4’ apart on the center. A 24”-tall knee wall made with red cedar tongue and groove boards added some of the subtle elegance needed to help this structure ‘fit in’ to the existing landscape design. 

The roughly 4’x4’ square-shaped window openings above the tongue and groove knee wall provided a delightful view inside the greenhouse from the covered walkway. Or visa versa.

With the two 20’-long sidewalls installed, plumbed, and braced, it was time build the roof. 

 

Even though the greenhouse is only 12’ wide, the lower roof pitch meant that this greenhouse would have to be able to withstand heavier loads. So we built the roof frame using rough sawn red cedar 2”x6” rafters connected with 2”x8” red cedar collar ties, bolted into place with two galvanized carriage bolts at each end. This created a very strong type of truss design that allowed the red cedar 2”x 8” ridge beam to sit right on top of the collar ties. The result was a very strong greenhouse roof design that ‘shared the load’ and allowed the roof sections to be joined together with structural steel screws for tremendous strength.

 

With the 20’-long sidewalls and roof frame fully assembled, we then began building the two 12’-wide gable walls. And since this greenhouse has no automated roof vents, an automated ventilation system that draws fresh air through the structure was essential. So we framed in an opening near the top of the front gable wall for a 16” exhaust fan, with a slightly larger opening high in the rear gable wall for a 24” motorized aluminum shutter. A thermostat would activate this ventilation system as needed to control the temperature inside the structure - drawing in air from outside the rear gable wall, through the greenhouse, and out of the front gable wall, via the 16” exhaust fan.

 

Hinged windows in the front and rear gable walls, with removable screens were requests that we were happy to accommodate. And Juergen’s idea for a 36”-wide hinged door placed near the right side of the front gable wall - so that it opens invitingly toward the house -  proved to be an practical and attractive design modification from the standard layout with the door centered in the front gable wall. The robust stainless steel hardware that the couple selected made these thoughtful design enhancements even more beautiful.

 

By now the greenhouse was beginning to take shape, and excitement was building all around. The cedar frame was complete, and electrical and plumbing contractors were on site running the needed water and power supplies into the structure.

 

As a native of Austria, where high-efficiency building codes frequently require triple and even quadruple pane windows, it was an easy decision for Juergen to select 16mm triple-wall, clear polycarbonate glazing for the greenhouse. It had both the high insulation value and the polished appearance that he wanted for the greenhouse. 

Easy to handle, cut, and install - we soon had the greenhouse frame fully glazed with the  polycarbonate that Juergen had selected. To waterproof the seams between polycarbonate sheets, were first cover them with Tyvek tape, then cedar trim strips screwed into the greenhouse frame that are finally sealed with a premium-grade exterior silicone.

 

The copper ridge cap and copper gable rake flashing added more elegance to the greenhouse roof, and a round copper gutter was installed on the right side of the greenhouse to divert rainwater away from the covered walkway, to a drainage channel behind the greenhouse.

 

With the greenhouse’s glazing installed and sealed, the ventilation equipment mounted in both gable walls, it was time to focus on the greenhouse’s interior design. This included a three cedar garden beds - each raised bed fitted with a drip irrigation grid that allowed for the three garden beds to each be controlled on an independent watering schedule. The six commercial-grade LED grow lights that Juergen purchased had a little heft to them, and this required that we build and install a sturdy cedar mounting rack into the greenhouse’s roof frame. These high-performance, full spectrum lights are designed to be fixed in place 6 feet above the grow area.

Unlike many indoor grow lights, these need not be raised and lowered based on the height of the plants. 

 

Per the couple’s request, we built and mounted 12” wide shelves - within easy reach - on both of the greenhouse’s 20’ long side walls. We also built a cedar potting bench with lower shelf and a separate cedar shelf - specially made for growing seedlings.

The three raised beds were soon filled with a premium organic soil blend. 

The irrigation system was connected to the water supply, and the watering schedule for each raised bed dialed in. 

Another group of skilled masonry artisans installed delightful brick flooring around our cedar garden beds.

When the six grow lights came to life on and the automated ventilation system kicked on, the soggy, shady garden era finally disappeared in the rearview mirror.

The greenhouse interior was bright and inviting. 

The fan pulled a a pleasing rush of fresh air underneath those surprisingly bright grow lights. 

 

Now, we just needed a touch of visual polish around the greenhouse, which we accomplished with carefully selected river rock, flagstones, and square pavers that neatly blended into the existing landscape. 

Juergen and Jessica’s soggy, shady, unsuccessful organic gardening era had finally disappeared in the rearview mirror.

And as we raked smooth the last few sections of river rock outside the greenhouse door, we were especially happy to see that the seedlings and seeds Jessica had planted were already hitting their stride.

Because, for us, knowing that any structure we make will be actually be put to good use is the best feeling of all -  much better than the satisfaction of simply building it.