How to Make a Raised Garden Bed Greenhouse In Minutes

A step-by-step guide for a simple, quick, and inexpensive method to create a greenhouse covering for your raised garden bed.

For this Episode of Easy Growing, the inventor of the Garden Grid™ watering system and Garden In Minutes® co-founder, Tom Traficante, shows you how to create a greenhouse covering for your raised garden bed so you can protect your plants from the cold.

With the use of masonry ladder, bricks, and plastic sheeting – you can quickly create a raised garden bed greenhouse to shield your plants. If an unexpected cold front is coming to your area, being able to protect your plants quickly may make all the difference between having a good harvest or none at all. Or, if you’re looking to get a jump start on your growing season, or even extend it into fall/winter, a raised garden greenhouse will help you accomplish just that!

Materials Noted in the Video for a 4×4 Raised Garden Bed Greenhouse Covering:

1) 3-10ft lengths of masonry ladder.
2) 8-12 bricks (stones, sand bags, or weights can be used as well)
3) 12×12 Section of Plastic Sheeting (we use 4MM thick)

Time to build:

~5 Minutes

Video Transcript

Intro

Hi, This is Tom from GardenInMinutes and this is Episode 8 of Easy Growing!
Today we’re going to be building a greenhouse out of materials that you can get locally at your home improvement center.

It’s an inexpensive, temporary way to protect your garden from the harshness of winter/cold weather, get your garden started early, and keep it nice and warm until the plants are mature and the weather warms up.

Materials Needed for the Greenhouse

This is a product that we love to use in our garden, called masonry ladder. You can find it in your home improvement center in the masonry section. It’s used for reinforcing concrete. It comes in 10 foot lengths, costs about two or three dollars a piece, and it’s made from the same material that your tomato cages are made out of.

We’ll also be using plastic sheeting. I like to use the 4mm thick plastic so it withstands the elements a little better. Also, we’re going to be using some bricks. You can pick them up at your home improvement center. You can also use rocks, sandbags, whatever you may want to use, they will be used to hold the plastic tight around the garden bed.

Materials: Masonry Ladder, 4mm Plastic Sheeting, and Bricks

Building the Greenhouse Framework:

Okay, so let’s get started with framework. Take a piece of masonry ladder and we’re going to insert it into the corner of the bed and push it down into the soil. On the other end, we’re going to do the same while we bow it over creating an arch… and we’re going to push it down into the soil like so.

Take a second piece… do the same on the other end (of the garden bed). Push it into the soil, use your foot if necessary. Then on the opposite side do the same thing. Put it into the soil and push it down. I like to use three of them for every four foot section. It gives a good amount of support for the cover that you’re going to put on later. So, here we go, one more. Put it right in the center, push into the soil… and one more time across.

Masonry Ladder is Used for the Framework of the Greenhouse Enclosure

Now, you can move these around, bend them, twist them, do what you have to do to get them right…and that looks pretty good.

So, there you have it. A very simple, inexpensive framework that can support plastic, or screen, or chicken wire, or any type of netting, bird netting, you’d like. But today what we’re going to do is we’re going to build a greenhouse.

Adding the Covering to the Framework & Securing it:

So I’ve taken a piece of plastic sheeting and I like to use a 12 by 12 section for each 4×4 bed. It fits just right and gives enough overlap on the sides to weight it down so the wind won’t blow it away.

Okay so that looks pretty good. Now what I’m going to do is take a brick, any brick that you can buy your home improvement center, and weight the corners. Put one in the corner here. Put another one over here.  Put as many as you need. You can line the whole side of it if necessary. Or you can use rocks or sandbags or anything that will weight down the sides.

Now do the same on the other side. Try to pull the plastic so there’s no slop in it. Check the back… Put one more over there…

Now in the front, what we’re simply going to do, is bunch the plastic like so, and weight it down.

Cover the Framework and Secure it.

Let’s Grow!

If you want to get inside the garden, just simply remove the brick, open up your little door here, and move the plastic back. Then once you’re finished, of course close it back up, and weight it down again.

So there you have it! A simple, inexpensive greenhouse that you can build in a few minutes out of materials that you can get at your local home improvement store. We’ll see you next time!