B&Q greenhouses

fryup

Anyone ever buy a b&q green/glasshouse??

What are they like? good quality? easy to assemble?? do i need a good foundation?

Thanks in advance,

ncur

I bought a 10x6 lean to greenhouse from B&Q 9 years ago, I believe it was a Halls Silverline, link to pdf of manual here.

I don't think this version is supplied by B&Q any more, so I don't know how useful my information will be to you.

Have to say, it's a great piece of kit, I went for toughened horticultural glass and that was definitely a good move, as where I live is pretty windy. I eventually used all weather clear silicone sealant to keep panes in the greenhouse, but before I did silicone in the glass, there were several occasions where the wind dislodged and hurled the glass 20ft or more down the garden, and the toughened glass survived that punishment.

Easy to assemble? It was definitely a 2 person job, and we numbered all the pieces and laid everything out in preparation for assembly. It took a good while and my abiding memory of it was that it was a tedious job rather than difficult, especially the bit where you have to put the rubber glazing strip into the grooves to cushion the glass, that was a pain in the posterior.

We put in a very good foundation, the site is sloping so we dug down below ground level to create a level base, and then dug a trench within that level area which we filled with hand mixed and poured cement. That work would have taken 1 weekend to complete, and then assembly of the greenhouse would have happened the following weekend or even weekend after that, to be certain that the concrete had cured completely. Probably overkill on our part and perhaps it could be done in 1 long weekend but we had never done anything like this before so we took our time to minimise errors.

We also invested in a louvre vent kit - like this and this was also a good idea as this, combined with the roof vents, allowed a good flow of air to keep the greenhouse from overheating during the summer months. We did run power to the greenhouse to allow winter heating to be installed to keep the greenhouse frost free but as it's a lean to and has the huge thermal mass of several metres of concrete from the house foundations behind it, it remains above freezing at all times, so I am picking tomatoes generally into November and other crops such as peppers into February.

The greenhouse is in great shape nearly 10 years on and I can't see why I wouldn't get another 20 or 30 years out of it. I keep an eye on it and have done a small amount of maintenance work on it but nothing major at all.

cerastes

Does the green house aid keeping off pests? like greenfly or blackflies? Id tried to grow some Roses in pots and noticed they were covered in Aphids which I think without looking it up further are greenflies.

Im going to try get my garden up and running but have a bit of an interest to grow flowers that will attract bees and butterflies and maybe even some herbs or edible plants.

My garden did seem to have a problem with snails but I havent seen any since the grass died off.
Id considered using unstained/untreated pallets up the wall with the most sun exposure for edible plants but am uncertain if the pallets might still have chemicals in them that might affect the plants or make them unfit for consumption.

Even if I didnt use the pallets for consumable food (which realistically could be a long way off) I still planned to possibly use them to line walls as a more supportive form of trellis to place plant pots in to create a greener space.