Why Ventilation is Important for Your Greenhouse

What Are the Benefits of Greenhouse Ventilation?  

So why is venting your greenhouse so important? Because it helps create an ideal environment for your plants. The most important thing to remember with ventilation is that it isn’t an exact science, you’ll need to manipulate the vents as the weather changes and make sure that you are tracking the stats inside your greenhouse.

If you do, you will easily be able to create the right space for your plants to grow. Now, let’s take a look at some of the top benefits of proper ventilation for greenhouses.

Temperature Regulation

Regulating the temperature in your greenhouse is a must, but it’s not as simple as dropping a thermostat in your outdoor space. This is where ventilation comes in. More plants actually die from excessive heat as opposed to the cold, and many times greenhouses can get quite hot.

A hot and humid greenhouse can lead to wilting plants and a myriad of other issues. Vents allow you to control how much outside air comes into the greenhouse and therefore cool down the space.

Having vents will help some of the heat inside the space to naturally escape and keep the temperature inside the house more even. If you live in a particularly hot climate, consider adding an exhaust fan to push more of that hot, stale air out of the greenhouse, or consider a special evaporative greenhouse cooler.

Many times, temperature regulation is one of the biggest challenges for those who manage greenhouses and vents can be the answer that greenhouse owners need.

Pest Control

Chances are, by now you’ve realized that vents are important for ventilation. Proper ventilation helps plants thrive with fresh air, but it also helps with pest control. There are plenty of bugs that can attack plants and make them sick, and these bugs tend to love greenhouses, especially those with dull, stagnant air.

Proper ventilation will keep your air moving and will annoy unwanted ‘visitors’ like flies so that your greenhouse won’t become a breeding ground for unwanted pests.

Humidity Regulation

If you’ve ever stepped inside a greenhouse, chances are you notice one thing: they are humid. Even though humidity helps stabilize the temperature in your plants and supports good soil health, too much moisture can actually start causing problems in your greenhouse.

Very warm spaces can contribute to disease in your garden greenhouse. However, ventilation and moving air are so important. Fresh air through proper ventilation will help stabilize these humidity levels so your plants don’t get too humid and start to suffer.

The key to a healthy greenhouse is in making sure there is balance and greenhouses, above all things, help you control the environment your plants are living in. Ventilation for proper humidity regulation is just another one of those environmental factors that you can control to help keep your plants looking and feeling their best.

Bringing in Fresh Air for Carbon Dioxide

Your plants need a lot to thrive, and one of those is fresh air. This means real air from the outside. Plants need carbon dioxide to thrive. It helps them with the photosynthesizing process and unfortunately, you can’t get that important carbon dioxide without air from the outdoors.

This is where vents come in. Vents will allow this carbon dioxide-infused fresh air into your greenhouse. Make sure that in addition to vents, you have circulating fans in place to help make sure the entire greenhouse has an even amount of fresh air.

Your plants “breathe.” They inhale oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, and need to absorb both to thrive. Let your plants live with proper greenhouse ventilation so they can breathe happily!

Helping With Pollination

Pollination occurs out in the real world thanks to natural wind patterns. Unfortunately, your greenhouse environment is all indoors, meaning no outside winds. This is where vents come in to help substitute that wind pattern.

A combination of vents and circulating fans will help pollination to naturally occur and is particularly important with fruiting plants. A gentle breeze will also gently shake your plants and help them to develop better root systems and sturdier stems, meaning healthier more robust plants that will be ready for the outdoors.

Fungal Infections

If you’ve ever had a plant with a fungal infection, then you know how difficult these can be to treat. For indoor gardeners, fungal infections are one of the biggest challenges to keeping plants healthy. Keep in mind that some plants are more susceptible to fungal infections than ever.

Sometimes, these fungal issues are relatively innocuous, and mostly just like a film of mildew, but other times they can grow into serious fungal infections that can severely harm your plant.

The tricky thing about fungal infections is that they spread through tiny spores in the air. When these spores are in the optimal wet, warm, growing conditions, they can proliferate quickly and spread throughout your entire greenhouse.

The difficult thing about fungal infections is that they will decompose virtually any natural material and once they infect a plant, they also infect the soil and any other natural material that may be in your greenhouse.

Natural ventilation will help this process by making sure that your greenhouse isn’t too warm, wet, or stagnant and therefore creating the perfect environment for funguses to take over.

What Qualifies as Proper Greenhouse Ventilation?

So, how exactly do you make sure that your greenhouse has proper ventilation? You need to choose the right fans and the right vents. An exhaust fan is an essential component of your greenhouse as it decreases the temperature in your greenhouse to improve the overall success of your space.

It’s not only important to include an exhaust fan in your greenhouse but to make sure that you’re placing your exhaust fans in the right place. Ideally, this is the roof of the greenhouse, opposite the external door. If you cannot add exhaust fans to your greenhouse for whatever reason, you need to add at least one or multiple additional circulation fans.

If you are purchasing a prefab greenhouse, always make sure that there are proper vents for ventilation in place. Depending on the structure, you may already have base or roof vents in the greenhouse. These are especially important to your space. You should make sure that you always leave these open during warm weather. There are even solar openers available that can help automatically open and close your vents when necessary.

If you live in a warm climate and are buying or modifying a greenhouse, extra vents can be advantageous to your overall greenhouse environment, but at minimum, you should have one large vent at the top of the greenhouse as well as several smaller vents around the perimeter of the structure. This design allows for the most natural type of ventilation, known as cross ventilation, and will create a more natural environment for your plants. It will also help ensure that your plants have a fresh supply of carbon dioxide.

Here at Stoltzfus Structures, we proudly offer quality buildings, sheds, greenhouses, and other structures, backed with our industry-leading warranty to help you feel confident in your purchase. We know our customers who want greenhouses for their backyards expect the best of the best, which is why we not only create durable structures, but ones with all of the right ventilation for greenhouses to help keep your plants as healthy as possible.

Our company is here to make sure you get a quality structure with a reliable warranty, for all of your backyard growing needs. Now all you need to do is get that green thumb going and start growing your favorite plants in your new safe and healthy environment.

About The Author

Lisa McAuliffe

Lisa McAuliffe has over 10 years of marketing and writing experience, including ghostwriting, copy editing and consulting. A graduate of Saint Louis University, Lisa holds a B.A. in English and Communications. She currently lives in Baltimore with her husband and two rescue dogs