We love our greenhouses. They were not expensive, they went up quick, we have been able to move them by picking them up and walking them to their new locations and they help us to extend our season and save things in the winter time. Did they save everything like I had hoped, no. None of the hardy mums made it. But we still love them. Last year when it got warm I clipped bug netting to the two doors. It worked, sort of, a white fly issue got out of control. It did keep out larger bug pests, cats, a dog, birds, and our own chickens.
I was set to repeat this again, just clip it up and call it done. However, I used all my bug cloth in other places. To be honest it was a pain last year. It would get pulled out of the clips, it dragged on the ground, it blew in and out which is how a lot of bugs got in, and it got gross. This year we had purchased some zippers to replace the original door zippers because at least two of them, maybe three are not working very well. We even talked about replacing the entire larger greenhouse cover because it had ripped when the wind pulled it off, twice. To be fair we had not tied that greenhouse down at all, the fact that it took a year for it to blow off was amazing. Once we got it moved out of the garden Bill used the super sticky gorilla wide tape and sealed up the rips. Neither of us thought it would last but so far it’s holding, and those rips were on the seams! The tape directions clearly said, “Do not use this tape on seams” so we both keep waiting for it to fail.
We had already purchased two zippers, CoverPRO Peel and Stick Zipper for tarp and plastic sheeting from Harbor Freight. There are other brands and you can find them at Home Depot and Amazon. This is just the one I saw first. The tape on this zipper is very sticky and it seemed to stick to the mesh. 
An issue I came across when researching replacing zippers, was the material used for the greenhouse toppers causes most tapes adhesion to fail. I bought these zippers because my idea was to use very sticky duct tape or greenhouse tape and then stick the zipper to that. Put another piece of the tape on the other side of the zipper and staple all four layers together. Even if the tape started to fail the staples should hold and all those layers should help to stop the staples from pulling through or tearing the material. I just never got around to doing it.
We also talked about making doors for the greenhouses, bought the wood and then used the wood to make potato tables. Other jobs keep jumping in front of doors. Plus most of the zippers are kind of working. Everyday we just roll them up and at night roll them back down and zip them up. Well except for the one door whose zipper totally broke. That one has a piece of landscape fabric clipped to it to hold it together.
On Amazon Prime days I bought bug netting to make doors.
It seems like a heavy duty material. The width was perfect for what I needed for the two big doors and this roll will give me enough for 3 doors with some left over. I think that left over can be used for the boxes where we want to put brassicas because it will offer them a slight shade benefit.
I started by measuring out the size of the door from pole to pole and from bottom to top. 107″ x 80″. The netting says it is 120″ wide, it’s not. It barely made it side to side when putting it up in the greenhouse. The zipper is 84″ long. I laid the zipper on the floor tape side up in the middle of my width. 
I could then lay my netting out over top of the zipper. Once I had it laid down I could tape the bottom edge so that pulling on the netting while cutting or attaching the zipper would not cause the whole thing to move on me. One of the first things I noticed was that painters tape did not hold the netting down at all. Which worried me. I was thinking okay so tape doesn’t stick to this net, well this is going to be a problem. I also noticed that the net seems to fray. The factory cut edges were frayed right out of the package. Time to go find some duct tape. Luckily we had some heavy duty black duct tape and that did “appear” to stick to the netting.
Since the zipper was under the netting I had to reach under it and pull the tape cover off. I would pull it down a foot or so then smooth the netting over the zipper glue and repeat that till I reached the end. Was that the best/easiest way to do this? It was “a” way and it did get done. Bill walked through as I was doing this and because he has been married for many years now and he is a smart man he said nothing. He did look at me as I sat on the floor scooting forward a foot at a time, pulling the tape protector off, and smoothing down the netting and then continued walking without saying a word. This either means, “You are doing great!”, “You are making my brain hurt with the way that you are doing that and I can no longer look at you.”, or he would like to say something but realized he might have to help or just do it the right way himself. Like I said he is a smart man and said nothing, I don’t think he was thinking about the great job I was doing.
It worked. I got the zipper stuck on and that glue is super sticky so it held the netting beautifully. I then started to unzip the zipper and cut the netting. After cutting the netting in half I zipped it back up because I wanted to tape all around the edges. When I got to the end of the zipper it bunched so I tried to pull the tape free to fix that. The netting ripped and started to shred, so no repositioning the tape, got it.
I knew I wanted to tape the bottom edge because I suspected that edge might fray. I had not intended on taping all the edges. After seeing how it tears and shreds I decided that taping all the edge was best. While it was still on the floor I ran tape. Once all the edges were taped down I then picked up a corner and folded the tape over so that it was sticking to itself with the netting in-between. It’s not pretty.
On the bottom edge I want to add another layer of tape on the inside to help hold the tape on. That’s the edge I’m afraid will wear the quickest because it will have the most movement and traffic. Will I do the sides and the top? Maybe, but it took an entire roll of duct tape to do this one door.
After I had the edges turned over I flipped the entire thing over so that I could add duct tape to the inside of the zipper edge.
You can see the light grey of the duct tape glue side, this is what I want to cover. Plus I’m hoping that the tape will stick to itself and the zipper material. This should help to hold it together and stop the netting from being pulled to much as the zipper is being opened and closed. I want to reduce stress on the material because it will tear and fray because it’s been cut.
The next step will be to add the staples. I am still going to staple the whole zipper edge together to help add strength and the tape and zipper material will give the staples the support that the mesh alone can’t. I first saw this on The Rusted Garden when he showed how to fix the plastic on greenhouse seams, you can watch that video here.
Eventually I might cut it to fit the curve of the building if it’s all working and we like it. At some point maybe I will do a wider duct tape edge and then use Velcro to attach it to the poles. I might also add a hem to the bottom so that I can put some kind of weight in it to further prevent the blowing so that it helps to keep more bugs out.
For right now if it helps to keep some bugs out, maybe discourages some animals from just wandering on in, and allows a cross breeze so that the plants aren’t cooking we will be happy. Could I have purchased a premade zipper door, probably. Would it have been big enough? I doubt it. The mesh was part of the Amazon Prime Days and I had the zippers and duct tape. The extra mesh won’t go to waste we used the white mesh this year and for the first time had zero issues with cabbage worms. Will this mesh keep animals out if they really want in? No, and now that the greenhouse is outside of the garden this could become a real issue. It will stop birds from just flying in and laying mesh over the strawberry plants on the bench has already proven to be a good idea. We lose a lot of our berries to birds. Last year we grew melons in the greenhouse and for the first time we had lots of melons. Birds were an issue with them too.
Before this post could even be finished we have some results. Failure the same night it was put up. Bill helped me clip it to the inside of the doorway on the metal frame pieces. This is where we discovered that the netting was not 120″ as advertised. I didn’t measure when it was on the floor I had measured the distance I wanted 112″ and the netting looked like it loosely was that wide. I thought that once it was being put up we would be pulling it so it was a little tighter in the opening and that extra fabric would just tuck into the frame. We almost didn’t have enough to clip it and leave enough slack so that it was not pulling on the zipper. Second issue was before we had even finished working in the garden that evening the tape was already failing. Duct tape did not want to stay stuck to the zipper material. That tape was literally falling off, getting stuck to itself or to the netting in other places and in general making a mess. Bill went out with the stapler and tried stapling it back together, but he did not put his staples close enough together and everything continued to come apart. We have had upper 90 degree days with very high humidity here and it does sit in the sun so maybe that has been enough to cause the glue to let go. Today I went out and the zipper glue had also let go of the netting up at the top. For now I added more staples to try and hold it all together and have it unzipped to reduce the stress on the zipper.
You can see that it looks okay, the staples seem to be holding it all together. I did add more today so that the gaps between staples was much smaller. Up at the top is a hot mess of sadness.
I had not brought tape down with me and it will need more tape. Not that the tape will hold but it will help to cover the sticky part of the zipper which is making life difficult. Plus the tape that completely let go will need to be cut away, again you can’t pull on anything once it has attached to the mesh or you will tear it.
This will probably get us through this season. Would I do this again? No. Building a door and just doing it right would have saved a ton of time and frankly a lot of money. Does it allow us to keep working on other projects, yes. After seeing how this door fell apart am I going to do two more of them? I don’t know. Right now we have mesh clipped over those two doors it’s helping to keep the greenhouses a little cooler and keeping some bugs out. As you can see not ALL bugs since there are two of them stuck to the glue of the zipper up here at the top. sigh. It might have been better to have just brought it all to the sewing room, made binding tape and used the machine to sew it all together. If I had done that I would not have bought sticky zippers I would have simply purchased roll zipper so I could cut my length. Maybe I’ll still do that for the smaller greenhouse door just to see if it works better. For now this one just needs to limp through the season.
