Gardening Services Close to You in Dulwich

A greenhouse is least useful in the month everybody thinks of it and most useful in February. Through the winter it is a holding pen for anything that will not take frost; in late winter and spring it raises the plants that fill the garden; by high summer it is often too hot to be pleasant and needs shading and constant ventilation; in autumn it is emptied and cleaned. A good many SE21 gardens have one standing at the bottom of the plot doing none of that, generally because the glass has not been washed in a decade.

Light is the whole point of the building

Glass films over with algae, dust and the green bloom that grows on the north side, and the loss falls hardest in exactly the months when there is least light to spare. Washing it inside and out in early autumn, panes and overlaps both, transforms what the structure can do from November onwards. Old putty-glazed panes want a soft brush and patience rather than any kind of pressure, since the glazing is easily lifted; the paved base, the path to the door and the standing area outside are a different matter and come under Dulwich pressure washing team.

Ventilation, not heat, is what goes wrong

Most plants lost under glass in winter are lost to still, saturated air rather than to cold, and grey mould spreading through a tray of cuttings is the usual evidence. Vents are opened on any bright, still day, even a cold one, and closed again before the afternoon temperature drops. Automatic openers, which work on a wax cylinder and need no power, do this more reliably than anyone who is at work all day. In summer the same building needs shading and a wet floor to keep the temperature down.

How little heating is actually needed

Keeping a whole greenhouse warm through winter is expensive and rarely necessary. The usual requirement is simply frost-free, and the practical approach is to heat the smallest volume that does the job: a partition of bubble insulation across one end, plants grouped together on staging rather than spread out, and a maximum and minimum thermometer, which is the cheapest useful instrument in any garden. Bubble lining over the whole structure cuts heat loss but also cuts light, so it is worth thinking about which is scarcer.

Frames, hardening off and the temptation to start early

A cold frame is the step between a heated bench and open ground, and skipping it is what kills half a tray of young plants in a night. Hardening off is done over a fortnight, opening the frame further each day and closing it at night until the last week. The other common error is sowing too early: seedlings raised in February have nowhere to go for two months and become drawn and weak on a windowsill, while the same thing sown in late March overtakes them.

What lives under glass

Warm dry air suits red spider mite, which shows as fine mottling and, later, webbing at shoot tips, and damping down discourages it more than anything else. Whitefly, aphid and sciarid flies in wet compost are the rest of the regulars, and biological controls introduced early work far better than anything applied once a population is visible. Something quite different moves in underneath: staging, stacked pots and an open bag of compost make ideal winter quarters, and droppings or a nest found during a clear-out is a matter for pest control for homes in Dulwich.

Clearing one out, and setting it up again

An unused greenhouse fills with broken pots, seed trays, bags of set compost, old canes and usually a pane or two of cracked glass, none of which goes out in a garden bin and some of which needs careful handling. A clear-out of that kind is a vehicle load and is handled in the way our man and van service in Crystal Palace deals with an awkward removal. What comes back in afterwards is worth keeping to a minimum: staging, a water store, a thermometer and clear floor space.

How the work is scheduled

Greenhouse work sits naturally as two set visits a year rather than a line on a weekly round: an autumn clean-down, wash and check of vents and glazing before the tender plants go in, and a spring set-up as sowing starts. Both are charged by the length of the visit. Water within reach and a decision made in advance about what is being kept save a good deal of time on the day. Gardens with the same structures a short way south are covered by our Penge team, and the surrounding year of work is described on our nationwide service.