It’s never too early for a bit of spring cleaning, and in fact now is the perfect time to give your greenhouse a good clean before sowing begins in earnest in the coming weeks.
A clean greenhouse gives your plants the best possible start by purging pests and diseases, not to mention much better light levels once all that dirt and algae has been scrubbed away. Plus, it’ll mean you have everything in order ready for a busy year of growing.
If you’re new to the greenhouse game, you might think that you’ll need a lot of expensive chemicals to start cleaning, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The most important thing is that you’re thorough.
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It’s important that you choose a mild day so that overwintering plants can be moved outside without harm. This is the first thing you’re going to want to do: remove anything and everything from the greenhouse so that you can really get into every nook and cranny of the greenhouse.
This is also a good excuse to do an inventory – what do you have, what needs replacing, and is there anything you don’t need that’s just taking up space?
Next, you can start cleaning! Scrub down every surface and pull up any weeds, and give the floor a good sweep too, taking care to get up as much rubbish as possible.
You’ll also want to wash the glazing, both inside and out. Use a bucket and sponge to give every pane a thorough clean. Depending on the height of the greenhouse, you may need a step ladder to get at those harder to reach points. Once the worst of the built up dirt has been removed, you can go about sterilising surfaces with a disinfectant.
It’s also a good time to clean out that guttering. Scoop as much as you can out by hand, and then slosh with water to finish the job. All those old leaves can go on the compost heap.
Finally, while everything is already out, you might as well give it a good clean before putting it back in your now-spotless greenhouse. Blast clean staging and sterilise, and wash down your pots and tools too.
Once everything has had time to dry, you can return everything to its proper place in the greenhouse, all looking spick and span. Now it’s just a matter of keeping it that way!
