Tuesday 17 January 2012

Bench Tops for Your Greenhouse Growing Wishes

By Ej Martin


Different folk build their DIY greenhouse plans for different purposes: some want to grow exotic plants that would not survive in the garden during the cold winter months. Others wish to have a head start on the growing season on fruit and veg. They require a greenhouse to plant seeds and have mature seeds prepared to be planted outside. Most of us need our DIY greenhouse for doing a little bit of everything. We might also need our greenhouse to be our winter refuge, a place where we will come and forget the cold wind and the hurricane raging outside. When selecting greenhouse benches, we have got to consider all our needs.

Greenhouse benches can be bought without or with legs. While legs are important because they supply solid support to the bench top and plants it holds, they are working for any type of bench top. Bench tops can noticeably alter depending on what we need them for.

Greenhouse Bench Top Basics

While greenhouse bench tops can be made of assorted materials, all of them have to satisfy certain basic requirements:

- They need to be solid and long lasting;
- They should be made from materials that can face up to the wet greenhouse environment and be well placed to resist rot and rust;
- The bench top surface has to be free draining so as to provide good air and water circulation;
- We need to be well placed to disinfect them in order to keep the greenhouse environment freed from bacteria and fungus that can seriously damage plants;

Materials

Most generally used bench tops are made from heavy-duty plastic, diverse kinds of wood or metal.

Plastic greenhouse bench tops are versatile, cheap and easy to maintain. Higher quality and better lasting plastic bench tops are designed in a honey-comb form, which guarantees strength and free drainage. Plastic bench tops are extremely adjustable and the entire bench system can be simply extended with bench top tiered support. The support lets you keep adding bench tops when you need more plant space.

Metal bench tops can be made of galvanized metal, aluminium slats or wire mesh. They are stronger than plastic bench tops and are usually painted to prevent rust and permit better maintenance.

Wood bench tops are made from long-lasting, durable wood like cedar, redwood or treated pine. The bench top is made from wooden slats, to permit free drainage and air movement. Wooden bench tops are extraordinarily tasty looking and are ideal for the greenhouse that also stands in as a conservatory. Although hardwoods are impervious to rot, wooden bench tops can be handled with wood preservative to guarantee durability.

What Each Greenhouse Wishes

A well-organized greenhouse, without regard for its intended use, wants one or two different types of benches and bench tops.

Potting Bench

Potting bench provides the basic work space in any greenhouse. The bench must be powerful to resist even the heaviest pots. Since you'll be spending plenty of time planting, sowing, potting and doing any of the hundreds of different tiny roles with your plants, ensure that your potting bench top is at the cushty height, so that you do not have to bend, if the bench is too low, or stretch your arms, if the bench top is too high. Most people like their potting benches to be made from wood, to have 1 shelf below the working surface for tools and one smaller, narrow shelf for convenient supplies.

Display Bench

A display greenhouse bench is meant to show your pride example plants in their full glory. The bench tops can be made from plastic, metal or wood, but the support must be tiered and at different levels, so that your plants can show best and still have enough light, and water and air circulate unreservedly. You may want your display bench to be on casters, so you can move it around.

Growing Bench

Growing benches are the workhorses of any greenhouse. You will use them to put all of your propagation trays, plug trays and seed trays. You can use regular bench tops for growing your seeds and seeds, but some bench tops are particularly designed to hold seed trays. They're sold as a bench top frame, with seed tray or plug trays of the same size. These trays can be easily removed and reused for the next crop. Bench top frames are mostly made of aluminum, and can be employed together with multi-tiered stands, for ideal use of space. Some bench tops frames are engineered to hold water reservoirs, for hydroponics.

You do not have to buy your garden bench tops for one special use. Any would do to start with, till you learn from experience what you need and what works best. You can mix. Bench tops made of wood, resin, metal or plastic, to determine which one works best for you.

When building a bench system for your DIY greenhouse, it's a good idea to go to any greenhouses built by your friends and neighbors, to see what they do and what they use. Nothing works like experience, if it is good or bad. Visiting other people's greenhouses will also help you to join the network of greenhouse enthusiasts, to get valuable tips, and frequently free samples of seedlings or cuttings to grow in your own DIY greenhouse. Very soon, you will be able to reciprocate and show off with your own perfect tomatoes or a real black tulip.




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