I work at a hospital, and I'm sure you know we waste a lot.... do you think this is a possible material to use for a homemade greenhouse?

they are the stiff packaging plastic that IV bags get delivered in.




trust me I got ton...

Brenden, the first thing to do with it is to test whether it will stand up to a summer's worth of sun. Some plastics do, and some will just disintegrate in a couple of months. So, leave one out in the sun for the next couple of months and see what happens. We solarize our soil at the school garden each summer, and the first summer, I bought a cheap roll of 4mm. plastic at Home Depot. That plastic made such a terrible mess, as by August it was blowing all around the garden in 1in. pieces.

Then I bought greenhouse grade 6mm. plastic which cost over twice as much, but held up perfectly for 2 years now, and we just put it on the beds for the third time.

Second thing is to find out if it lets enough light through, as it's sort of translucent and not clear. You could cut one and tent it over a plant for the summer, (don't enclose the plant though, it will cook) to see if the plant can grow with what light gets through. If you can put it next to an uncovered plant of the same type, you'll have a good reference. Don't forget that you'd be using your greenhouse in the winter, and the sun is much less intense then so you need all the light you can get to grow stuff in a greenhouse through the dark winter days.

What type of greenhouse are you thinking of making with them? Somehow I can't imagine using hundreds of any kind of plastic bags to put a GH together...

Doesn't the hospital send them for recycling?

I will do a reference point with the 2 plants, great idea!

Not sure WHAT kind, but if I can do it with these, I have tons!

And no, they DONE recycle NNNEEEAAARRRLLLLLYYYYYY enough!

So disappointing........

They also have these rediculous plastic bags, that our linen come in inside the bin.

I will put them over the sunflower seeds enough to keep birds off.

I would split a bag up one side, and open it out so you can tent the plant with it. Clip it to some stakes or something. Air and water need to get around the plant to keep it cool enough. You just want the sun to pass through the plastic to the leaves for your experiment.

Another limiting factor to making those bags into a greenhouse is, what can you fasten them together with? Some glues/adhesives will melt plastic, others won't stick to it at all. You need to make your greenhouse fairly well sealed - not so important to keep rain out, but to keep heat in, in the winter. If you just stapled them together, for example, you'd end up with hundreds of little holes.

I would try it out on a small project in the sun as someone has already suggested. I used old IV tubing, O2 Tubing, and blue rubber tourniquets after DH's 3 mo hospital stay. Most held up in our heat but not as well as green "tape" normally used to tie up plants to stakes. I had a lot of stiff blue rubber laying around my yard.