Warm and Welcoming: Tour a Vintage-Inspired Greenhouse in Montana

I spend a lot of time in the greenhouse, and love items with a story, so I knew I wanted to incorporate older pieces that didn’t detract from, but would add to, the space as a whole. The nice thing about these items, too, is that when they aren’t in use here, I can use them in our day-to-day lives. It makes sense to me to invest in multi-functional pieces that could work anywhere. As a general rule, I stayed away from metal, as it can get up to 120 degrees inside the greenhouse in the summer, so I opted for materials like wood and ceramic.

The 14-foot-by-20-foot kit is from Cedar Built Greenhouses. I chose to go with a custom, wider build (their typical greenhouse is 12 feet) because I wanted the space to fit a dinner table inside for events or hosting. There are eight automatic vents on the roof to let hot air out in the summer, and we place two fans near the floor vents to help move some air through when it starts to warm up. Some greenhouses come with built-in fans. The plexiglass windows highlight the viewshed from the growing beds. In Montana, we are surrounded by mountain ranges, and see the occasional summer rainbow after a mid-afternoon downpour.

Small seeds like celery, snapdragons and onions can be started in smaller flats and then transplanted when they outgrow this space. The Montana growing season is painfully short (just over 100 days where we live, in Zone 4), so we start most of our plants in February and March to place out in the garden after mid-May. This year, I’m really excited to be growing safflower and seashell cosmos, and growing mini watermelons vertically in the greenhouse.

During the Round Top Antique Show in Texas last year, I found this antique tobacco harvesting table from Old Farmhouse Primitives. I knew it was the perfect fit for a potting table because the screen (previously used for harvesting tobacco leaves) could be used to collect extra soil so it can be dumped back into the container. It’s higher than a typical table and has plenty of room for storage underneath. Thinking outside the box on what a potting bench could look like can help bring some uniqueness to your space, and can bring life into old pieces — a baker’s table with a possum belly drawer could work, too!

For creative storage, try a salt box. If you walk through an antique store, you’ll often find these wall-mounted boxes or jars. When starting seeds in the spring, I have a ton of small wooden stakes for labeling. Having them close by is a great way to make sure I don’t forget what I’ve started. I usually add the date on the back, so I know when they were planted.

In winter planter boxes, you can grow cold tolerant greens that thrive in the cool weather. Arugula, kale, spinach, radishes and bok choy are all happy to have some colder temperatures in the mornings and evenings. We made our own planter boxes with cedar, to match the greenhouse structure. Having them as raised beds made it more comfortable to work in, but presented challenges in trying to make sure they were getting enough warmth throughout the winter. We covered the beds with frost cloth every night to protect the starts from freezing. To tackle this in the future, we will run a soil heating cable through each bed to help it maintain heat. Gardening is all about trial and error!

I can be a forgetful gardener and lose track of how many seeds I’ve started. By shaking them into small dishes or these terra-cotta saucers, I can see how many I have left. I use a long pair of tweezers to gently place seeds in the pots. They also hold thumb tacks, little nails or anything else I need to have around but don’t want to lose.

An old tobacco hanger attaches to the interior for hanging tools. A carpenter’s brush sits in a vintage egg basket, ready to sweep the potting soil back into the drawer. The basket is used for any additional tools to save as much surface area as possible for trays.

One of my favorite things to collect is a handful of old wicker baskets and open tool boxes like this one to use to carry veggies from the field to the kitchen.

If you’re starting a lot of seeds, buying a germination mix in bulk can sometimes save you money. Bulk is great! But the space it takes up isn’t, so having a four-gallon crock of germination mix allows me to keep it on hand in the spring, and refill it from the source bag. A lid for the crock will close it up when I’m done, and a crock is an easy place to mix the soil with water before it gets put into trays. Crocks are easy to find at any antique store and I found this one at an estate sale in California. Shipping it home wasn’t cheap, but it’s served as a major tool around our house.

You can use anything to store seed packets. Some people use photo organizers, boxes or plasticware like this. They are organized according to type: flowers, types of tomatoes, etc. Seeds like to be kept cool and out of sunlight, so I keep mine in a closet in the mudroom until I need to pull out a handful of packets when it’s time to plant.

We brought both power and water into the greenhouse for ease. I wanted to be able to power heat mats, heaters, fans, or anything else that might require power. We decided to go with a gravel base (specifically crusher fines) because it drains easily. We also added a weed mat underneath the gravel to keep weeds from growing out of the greenhouse floor.

If you’ve got access to some space and materials, starting seeds can be a great way to save a little money but still have an overflowing garden. I found this antique scoop at a Midwest antique shop and loved the shape. I didn’t know what I would use it for, so I kept it around for a few years before it found its purpose here in the greenhouse. If I like the shape of small objects I find while curating and antiquing, I like to hold on to for future projects, even if I’m not sure what purpose it serves yet.

Heat in the greenhouse has been the biggest concern for us in growing plants over the winter. We have four black trash cans that are full of water that will heat up during the day and slowly release that heat at night. A hay bale can be an easy, bench-like and insulative option for the start trays. Most of the plants we grew this winter thrive in temperatures between 50-65 degrees. Too far outside those temperatures, the seeds can have trouble germinating or growing to a good size without bolting or going to seed.