Kitchen Garden Forum

This is the first year I've had a greenhouse and I want to put up bubble insulation. I've seen a good article on Harrod Horticultural's Gardening Forum about this but I wanted to check with someone with hands-on experience. My greenhouse is 6ft x 4ft - how much bubble wrap do I need and how will I hold it up? The greenhouse is aluminium.

And more importantly - is it easy to do on your own?!

I use plastic clips that can be pushed through the bubble wrap (or netting in the summer) and then twist clipped into the greenhouse frame. buy them from my local garden centre. Dead easy to do on your own.

The large bubble type is better than the usual small type.Not something for mail order. Ask around and buy locally if you can.
Allan

I know this might be deemed cheating but my lovely husband bought me a mini greenhouse/big propagator. It's a plastic sturdy oblong thing and it's heated with big vents. I'm just going to put that in the greenhouse with my fave herbs. Fingers crossed they survive for at leats some of the winter.

My aluminium greenhouse has grooves for self tapping screws rather than somewhere for plastic clips so I hold it in place with screws and plastic washers. As it is a pain to remove I don't. The greenhouse is aligned East-West and is one of those that has two vertical sides then each half of the roof is two sections so I cover three of the four roof sections and the North side and the ends. I have made Correx panels for the South side that I use for February and March and remove sometime in April, for extra insulation when I am using most heat. The insulation must be big bubbles and UV resistant - don't buy cheap packaging bubbles or it won't last, should get 5 years at least out of it. If you use sulphur and need screws they must be stainless.

I bought my bubble wrap from our local farm supplies people - very cheap there. I use it in my tunnels and I've got wooden batons fixed at intervals to the metal structure and I tuck the wrap behind those batons. Easy to put up and even easier to remove.

I use the batons in the summer to hold shading nets and nets for climbing up ( for the plants, not me!).

On the subject of green house insulation, I am having a problem finding the right sort of bubble polythene, would it be ok for me to use fleece, or would this keep out too much light.
longpod

I've just bought a roll of big bubble bubble pack from my office stationery supplier. It's a 25m roll and retails at around £33 (although I did get a discount).

The use of fleece probably would lose you too much light, even bubblewrap reduces the light to a greenhouse by a good percentage, just at a time when light levels are crap anyway. Personally I just keep it frost free until March when the temp goes up to 10 degrees so my peppers, chillies and tomatoes can grow on without check.

My company recently moved office and things like computers were wrapped in bubble wrap before going into packing cases. This stuff looked around 4-5 feet wide and was in a massive roll (around 1.5 feet in diameter)*.

It might be worth contacting removals companies to see if you can have any left over after moves?


Colin

* oh yes, the stuff we had was vivid pink (but maybe that wouldn't matter over winter....!)

I wouldn't use packaging bubbles, there is no uv protection and it rapidly goes very brittle and makes a mess as it breaks up.