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Harriet Bain, of Rolla, at work in her greenhouse. Growing in the greenhouse It’s worth the time and effort required There are other considerations, too. “You’ve got to have the space and the location. It should be on the south side of the house, and it’s better if it is attached to the house, so you can avoid walking in the snow in the winter.” Having it attached to the house makes it easier to supply electricity to the greenhouse. Yes, you’ll need electricity for auxiliary heaters and ventilating fans. That brings up another point; a greenhouse can be an expensive hobby, as well as a time-consuming one. “You don’t need money for plants, people will give you plants,” laughs Bain, a Phelps County Master Gardener and former president of the chapter. “But you have to have money for heat; all the heat goes through the glass,” Above all, though, you’ve got to budget your time to take care of the plants in the greenhouse. Watering is a major task. Because the plants are in different sizes of pots, they dry out at different rates. Depending on the temperature and the cloud cover, they can dry out very quickly, so you’ll have to check on them. “I shouldn’t have this greenhouse, but this is my escape. I have a lot of escapes,” Harriet jokes about her numerous activities and interests. In addition to her work with the Master Gardeners,
she is involved in several aspects of “I like people,” she says. She also likes plants, even if growing them in a greenhouse takes some additional time. The greenhouse Harriet and Lee Bain added to the south side of their house just outside Rolla 30 years ago used to take round-the-clock attention. That was back in the days when they had a wood stove in it, and Lee would get up at least twice a night, sometimes three times, to throw more logs on the fire and keep the greenhouse plants warm. “Then he added auxiliary electric heat, and now it is just electric heat,” Harriet says. Pointing to a wood-burning stove that now serves as a table for plants, she says, “This is, I think, the third stove we went through.” After moving here in 1963 so Lee could teach statistics at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the Bains moved into the house in 1968. In 1977, they added the greenhouse. “It was Sunnywall Flower’s greenhouse,” Harriet says. That company, which had operated a greenhouse and florist shop on Highway 63 south in Rolla, discontinued the greenhouse. “We bought the greenhouse, and paid a contractor to pour the foundation and set the upright posts. Lee took down the greenhouse, brought it here and put it back up.” There were changes from the beginning. “It had another 18 feet in length originally, but we made it 22 ½ by 34 feet, because we didn’t want to take out that oak tree,” she says. Later, when Lee decided he didn’t want to get up so many times in the night to stoke the wood-burning stove, he added a partition to take another 10 feet off the greenhouse. “Now it’s 22 ½ by 24 for the greenhouse, and this part is more like a storage area. I’ve got all my soil mix and my pots here,” Harriet says. “And this part is like a cold frame. I can start plants in here.” Maintenance of the greenhouse has not been too difficult. “This is all double-strength glass, and we have had very little loss,” she says. “The tree hasn’t fallen yet.” The only problem has been that caulking fails over time, and it has become more difficult for Lee to recaulk it. “We’re getting old,” she says, “so in some places he has put in these Fiberglas panels instead of recaulking. The light is not as strong during the winter as it was before.” The Bains have also eliminated the vents where fans were once installed. “Now in the spring and summer, we carry the plants outside. Some go on the patio, some go on benches, some go on the deck Lee built. Some go in the ground. This is now a cool greenhouse. The temperature goes down to 44 degrees, so I can grow the plants that I favor. I can raise the orchids that will take the cool temperatures. I can hold bougainvillea, camellias and miniature roses over winter. I have jasmine and other tropical plants, and I just kind of keep them alive.” “Then in the summer we take the big plants out on the patio. The hibiscus in bloom goes on the patio, the orchids go on the benches, the begonias and some other flowers go into the ground,” she says. She used to grow vegetables in the greenhouse. “I could have tomatoes and cucumbers in here, but now the temperature gets too low for the tomato blooms to set. I don’t grow any vegetables in here anymore,” she says. Because of the proximity of the plants to one another, pests can be a problem. “I’ve got some aphids on some plants, so I’ll be working on that next,” she says. Harriet says she tries to follow the integrated pest
management recommendations for greenhouse growing offered by the “But it’s more pest management than integrated,” she says. “I use safer sprays, rubbing alcohol, spurts of water and crushing with my fingers. I’m allergic to pesticides, so I don’t use any of that stuff. I just enjoy my bugs.” Having the greenhouse allows Harriet to grow beautiful and fragrant flowers that she likely wouldn’t be able to without it. “I like to start things from seed,” she says, and explains that she began a particular Clivia plant, which is related to the Amaryllis, from two seeds for which she paid $20. “It takes four to five years to bloom, this one boomed in four years, and this is the third time for it to bloom.” Reaching down she picks a huge lemon from a tree. “I’ve had this lemon tree many years. I get one pie a year out of this tree,” she says. In the center of the greenhouse there is a large ground pot for tropical plants that stay there year-round, such as jasmine. “There’s always some flower blooming in here, and even if they’re not blooming, they’re green and pretty to look at,” she says. “We are going to keep this going as long as I can climb up on this bench and work.” |
