The wooden greenhouse – the palace of possibilities

Isn't it incredible how much we can do in a greenhouse? All summer long we are treated to a cavalcade of small "wonders of cultivation". And isn't it incredible how easy it is to work in a wooden greenhouse? At least that's what I've been thinking about today, with a hammer in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. So writes grower Karin Eliasson, who has a greenhouse on Södermöja in the Stockholm archipelago. Here you can read about her thoughts on the practical conditions of the greenhouse.

I spend this late summer day tinkering in my greenhouse. The garlic is drying, the tomato plants are still producing, while the cucumbers have tired and have to go out on the compost heap. Another high season is coming to an end, eggplant, peppers and melon are being replaced by small cabbage plants, endives and spinach. I mow and clean up. I take down climbing supports that are no longer needed, screw up a new shelf for empty pots, put up hooks for autumn lanterns.

Simple solar-powered lanterns light up the greenhouse in the evening. I actually have them mostly because it's beautiful to look at from inside the house now that the evenings are getting dark.

When the garlic is to be dried, I place boards between the walls of the plant bed; they work well as tables with a little draft from underneath.

It strikes me how well the greenhouse cooperates, allowing me to solve all the small challenges easily – a screw, a hook, a nail. Wires, climbing supports and shade curtains have been installed liberally during the past summer. The greenhouse has allowed everything, responded to all my demands for flexible solutions. No factory-made special tools are needed. I enjoy it, feeling how the greenhouse tolerates me tinkering with it. As a grower, you do that, tinkering with things, because needs are constantly changing.

Shelves come and go in my greenhouse, simple wooden shelves with brackets that you can screw up when needed and take down if they get in the way during the summer.

First, there is the shelf with small plants throughout the greenhouse that needs shelves, then there are medium-sized plants for shading, then there are large plants that need tying up. And now comes the time when the harvest and seeds are hung to dry. Large and small, hanging plants and climbing plants, sun protection and frost protection. Tools and lights. This is an aspect that we often overlook when choosing a greenhouse – the grower's constant need for simple and smart hanging and tying up. The need for a greenhouse that cooperates. Here I stand now, after another growing season, feeling grateful for my greenhouse, which makes me so confident in that particular point. It allows me to tinker.