by Pamela Kay

Created on: March 15, 2009

The top five benefits and goals for greenhouse gardening are lengthening the growing season, controlling the environment to protect from weather, insects and wildlife, convenience, using hydroponics and the freedom to grow those rare and exotic plants unsuitable for your zone. Whether it's glass or heavy-duty plastic a greenhouse offers all this to any gardener.

*Lengthening The Growing Season

Spring is often full of surprises when it comes to the weather such as, strong winds that beat the life from seedlings, torrential rainfall that washes seeds from the ground, dramatic temperature fluctuations that kill everything and late frosts that require covering any seedlings in a garden.

Using a greenhouse will dramatically increase the length of your gardening season because it allows you to start seedling weeks before the last predicted frost date, no matter which zone you live in. By eliminating the weather problems and getting an early start, your will harvest before the heat and drought of late summer arrives.

*Benefits Of A Greenhouse's Controlled Environment

Greenhouses give you total control of the environment and this is a gardener's dream come true. How can this help you? Aside from lessening problems with diseases, insects and cross-pollination, here are several other ways.

If the sun is too bright, drop a blind or hang a curtain through the heat of the afternoon.

If the temperature drops too low, turn on some heat.

If the temperature is too high, you can turn on a ventilation fan.

If the day is cloudy, turn on your plant lights.

If the Spring rains fail to materialize, put water where it's needed.

If it's windy, don't worry, your plants are safe in a greenhouse.

*Convenience Of A Greenhouse

A greenhouse increases the convenience of gardening, much the same as a potting shed does, as well as allowing you to grow more in less space. With a work surface at waist level, which does away with much of the bending and stooping as you work in your flowers, hanging baskets overhead and larger plants on lower shelves, you have tripled your growing space.

All the tools and materials you need such as potting soil, trowels, containers and trash bin are right where you can find them quickly. In a greenhouse, the majority of plants are in small containers, which makes it easy to move them individually without disturbing the roots of near-by plants.

There's no need to bundle up in heavy gloves and coats that restrict your movements when you garden in a greenhouse. Even in the dead

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