Small Homemade Greenhouse Plans

Significance

• A sustainable charity in Scotland, REAP, first designed a greenhouse made of discarded plastic 2-liter bottles to get these bottles out of landfills and use them for something practical. The interior of the bottle greenhouse stays approximately 10 degrees warmer than the air outside.

Materials

• Materials called for in this project include four 8-foot-long 4x4 corner posts, 240 feet of 2x2 timber and 140 6-foot garden canes. Hardware needed includes hinges, screws, fencing staples, Quickcrete for setting the posts, gravel, weed barrier and gopher wire for the flooring; and approximately 1,500 plastic bottles.

Procedure

• Dig out the foundation and lay down weed barrier, gravel and wire. Dig and set the post holes. Then treat the bottles, but be prepared: This will need to be done for each bottle and can take a long time. To do this, wash the bottles and remove the labels and then cut the tops and bottoms. Frame up the sides and roof using the 2x2 boards.

  Stack the bottles one inside the other and run a garden cane through each stack. At one end, reverse the bottle and fit it inside the others. You should have a long cane with the ends sticking out of the drinking ends of the bottles. Line the canes up side by side in the wall and roof frames and attach them at the ends with fencing staples. Screw the completed frames into the uprights. Make the door out of a smaller frame and hinge it onto one of the uprights.