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Article: Now I first want to tell you I find housekeeping to be the most disagreeable word on the planet. I also want to inform you I don't like to be in a dirty house either, greenhouse or wood domicile. No matter how I feel about it, the greenhouses have to be cleaned out in the fall. We are struggling to recover from my husbands latest heart procedure, a double by-pass and he cannot return to doing the greenhouse heavy work for 6 weeks or more. The good part of this is he is doing so well. It helped having him so physically fit. Because of all this, some of our grown children decided to come up from out of state and do that which my husband has not been able to do and what I am not physically capable of doing(in addition to my duties which are too many already). They must have grown up a lot in the past seven years because they now want to give back to their Dad. My heart is so full because they not only learned to give back but they have it in their hearts that they should do so without being asked. They are a great example for my youngest sons who still live at home. Since we are so actively cleaning out the greenhouses, I want to share some of these lovely chores with you. You may not be aware of this, but weeds are the greatest cause of pests and disease in a greenhouse. Those little pests sometimes prefer them. The ground under the bench does not get sprayed as well as the things on the bench tops and the pests hide down there and usually multiply very quickly. We try to keeps the weeds down in season but during the summer with all the other gardening chores, harvesting vegetables to sell and growing on perennials, a jungle seems to spring up in the idle greenhouses. It would be great to spray Round Up and kill them all but one has to use caution because in a greenhouse things do not evaporate like in the outdoors. If you are not very careful, enough could be on the inside plastic and drip down next winter on your new plants causing certain death(even the anticondensate plastic drips some and the steel pipes always sweat). A choice is made, pull the weeds or spray them. Sometimes we have to do both. If you only have a small greenhouse, just pull them and save yourself some anxiety. Then the benches, ground and interior plastic should be sterilized so that no diseases are passed on to your new crop. You can sterilize all the benches, ground, interior plastic, any pots, etc. with a solution of household bleach mixed 1 to 10. You can also obtain a commercial disinfectant to sterilize, kill algae, and prevent certain pests, like fungus gnats. We use the commercial disinfectant and we also use it after we use Round Up on the interior plastic cover to remove any traces of the Round Up as well as prevent the algae. The first chore even before weeding is to remove any and pots, containers, whatever so no little guests will have a home over the winter. An aphid can live under a leaf in a greenhouse to survive until Spring comes and hatch a major population at that time. Spider mites are also great at hiding, especially in sand floors. Yank that mess out of there, soak it in the bleach solution or commercial disinfectant and store it out of the greenhouse if possible. Sterilize all your tools, scissors, knives, potting bins and anything else you use on your plants or to dig in the dirt. After all the above is done, then you can go and grow next Spring!! All will be ready.
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