Greenhouse flooring

HI, I hope someone can help me decide what flooring to have in my green house? its a standard size green house with soil boarders and paved path down the middle. At the end it has got membrane with gravel where the staging is placed. Can anyone advise the benefits of paving the whole area? last year I grew my toms in the boarders and they ended up looking like they had wilt, so I do not want to plant in them again. Any advice/suggestions appreciated.

 

I go for completely paved,soil in borders needs changing,harbours pests and diseases, use grow bags ,pots and containers to grow stuff in.

 

I have a different view

I grew my Toms, Cues, Melons and Peppers in pots last year (I had the pots, and didn't have time to sort out the newly erected greenhouse's soil). I have grown in pots and growbags many times before (at previous houses), and indeed even in Ring culture (many years ago).

I work from home, so it wasn't hard to attend to watering regularly etc. but even so I had split fruits on the tomatoes.

My plan was to grow in the greenhouse soil for two reasons, and thats what I am going to try this year.

1) Less hassle watering - the plants will be able to "even out" the watering by using the water in the soil, rather than just the water in their pot / growbag.

2) More height. The soil surface in the pots was 12" or so above the greenhouse floor, so 12" less growing height. I've lowered the soil in the greenhouse further (i.e. so I now step-down into the greenhouse)

I removed the soil (which I admit was hard work).

But now my plan is to put my Muck and Compost into the greenhouse, grow the crop for one year, then put the "soil" onto the vegetable bed the following year, and fresh Muck + Compost into the greenhouse. That will, of course, be much less hard work than the solid clay I had to dig out!

Some pictures on my blog

I have a couple of Daleks for composting, and all the greenhouse waste (Toms etc.) goes into one of those, and the compost from that is not used in the Greenhouse (nor on Potato bed)

Having said all that, I also have a paved floor in my other greenhouse (which is not used for cropping, only for propagation and house plants etc.) and having a solid floor allows it to be "flooded" with water for damping-down in the heat of the summer - the evaporation of the water from the floor increases humidity for the plants, but more importantly the process of evaporation reduces the temperature in the greenhouse.