Three years ago - a year after the building of the greenhouse - we had to add about a one foot eave on the barn slant sides of the greenhouse, We weren't able to get the windows (upcycled of course) to seal, so every time it rained we had water running down the walls! Not good for my plants, or for the wall wood!
That worked great as a solution to the water problem, but once the green house was full of plants, it started to get a little dark in there. Everything shaded everything else! You can see in the above left photo how that eave might make some shade. So we went into solution mode for that problem. One of the solutions is mirrors on the ceiling and walls! Making new openings for windows or changing the blue board out of the ceiling isn't an option right now so we have to use other options.
The above photo shows a long narrow mirror on the wall of the greenhouse behind some tomato plants. It helps to reflect the light from the morning, opposite side of the greenhouse back into the room. None of the mirrors cost me more than $10.00. Mostly I got them free from people moving and didn't want to deal with them! Garage sales and thrift stores are also great sources - you can use broken ones even - just use lath to staple the pieces to the wall or ceiling!
This photo shows two of the mirrors on the ceiling of the greenhouse. This is a shot taken before the plants grew up and obscured the light. Probably early spring sometime. So far there are three mirrors on the ceiling and two on the walls. This has helped greatly but not quite solved my low light problem, especially in winter when it is in short supply. It's also great because some of the mirrors are pretty too! Because I eventually want to be a year round operation I have to have a way to use natural light so I am only using my off grid solutions when it is truly dark out! I'm not quite there yet. Stay tuned to learn how to use tinfoil and space blankets to help the light explode into your dark space!
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