Dreaming of Year-round Gardening

For most of my life I have wanted a greenhouse. I'm not sure when that desire started, or how. Something intrigues me about the mini-world within, safeguarded from the fickle elements and productive in the face of winter famine. Being vegetarian, I dream of cheap year-round greens and extended growing seasons for fresh fruits and vegetables.

My interest in greenhouses came from to aspects of my childhood. I grew up on a farm in Missouri. Our land has a beautiful, south-facing, gently-rolling hill—perfect for multiple greenhouses, an earth-contact home, fruit trees, solar and wind power, etc. My mother used to design homes, imagining what she would build on that hill some day. I would watch her dream and wonder what I wanted in my own home. We discussed her floor plans, her dreams, and possible strategies to hasten their fulfilment. My family never had enough money to build out there (though they paid off the mortgage years ago); those unfulfilled dreams still simmer.

We also tried to garden every year, with varying success. Our biggest struggle was controlling weeds during the incessant rainy season, which lasts most of the summer, ending by July, whereupon all green things wither and die in the heat. Our garden was often choked, then smothered. If we managed to keep on top of the garden labors, after all that summer work, winter killed the fruiting plants long before they finished producing.

I looked upon this situation every year and wondered how to temper this climate more effectively. A greenhouse could potentially mitigate this climate. Though I knew enough about gardening to know that greenhouses are not simple solutions. They require a lot of skill, patience and diligent care to use and maintain in perpetuity.

One year, I designed a counter-balanced hovering harness system to float over a garden, reclining while I worked. I never actually built it, but I realized one day that it would be especially nice in a greenhouse, where space is at a premium. All of these thoughts fed my interest in greenhouses until I discovered another type of "green house", an environmentally friendly home made of natural, renewable materials and designed for a symbiotic relationship with the environment—not a brute-force resistance to it.

Once I became vegetarian, in college, I began to research passive solar home designs, off-grid living, and green home building techniques. I discovered some excellent examples of integrated homes and gardens, using atriums, solariums, and attached greenhouses. I also found that I loved house plants, incorporating living things into my home increased its peace and tranquility. Somehow, I would make this happen some day.

Now that I'm married, I have added another opinion and set of dreams to the mix. At first, I was frightened by my wife's expectations for home designs and habits. She loved more traditional, colonial frame homes, set on top of a hill, with windows on all sides, and cleared of trees nearby. This type of home battles the elements, living at odds with the seasons. This is an artificial home, as I'll call it. This was a hard difference to overcome at first

While she mostly adopted my vegetarian lifestyle, she was not sold on a green home design, built of renewable materials, in an earthy, natural habitat that we can cultivate and improve as a family. Happily, over the years, our tastes have grown together, and she is now just as sold as I am on a passive solar green home. She particularly likes strawbale designs, for their organic form and soft curves. Best of all, some of the most effective passive solar designs incorporate an attached greenhouse of some sort!

So why do I share all this? Over the past few years, I've noticed a trend for responsible, green building. The "green" movement is gaining traction, even in Utah. This leads me to wonder if I could pull this off, design and build a "hippy home" in conservative Utah county. I think so. I've been collecting resources, book lists, web sites, etc. and I need a place to list them. I'm also hoping for some comments, pointers, and sanity checks.

For example, last week the Daily Herald published this article about the Clifford Family Farm, which grows organic produce here in Provo! They love visitors, so I going to take our little family over for a tour. While their greenhouses are not attached to their home, they do farm organically, year-round. I want to see what they think about attached greenhouses, and year-round gardening.

There are also a few other homes built with green techniques in the valley. I ran across several of them as a college student and wish I could remember where they were. One (in northeast Orem) had a large, two-story attached greenhouse. Another (in northeast Provo) had a Trombe wall. I'm retracing the relationships that led me there in attempt to find those homes and ask their owners about their experiences. If you know of any other homes in the area, please let me know!

I also will collect what resources I find on my Eco-domotics project pages.