A GREEN HOUSE BEAUTY

I had to stop in and show you what greeted me in the greenhouse this week. This is the bloom from a plant called "Devils Backbone". It is a succulent that has little plantlets develop on the edges of the leaves. They drop off and grow just about anywhere. I have a few plants that were really ragged from being left outside too long this fall. They nearly died because of the cold. I brought them in and almost threw them out (I have young ones that I can get new plants off of). They were put in the corner of the small heated green house and have been totally ignored. Needless to say they will not be a plant that is on the back burner this year.

AUTOMATED TEMP CONTROL

I am the automated temp control in our greenhouse. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't invest in an automated system. I have to run down to the green house at least three times in the day. That should be a literal statement. The exercise would do me good. It is an 1/8 of a mile to the garden. Downhill is not bad, but the slope coming back is at least a 45 degree one. When you get the last 200 feet it changes to almost a 60 degree slope. Quite a workout, a stair master is not needed here. Yesterday the day was overcast and never got above 35 degrees. It started with 20 degrees. The wind was gusting in a knock you over wind. The humidity was high. It felt like your flesh was being ripped from your face. The green house was kept closed all day and it never went above 55. The small inner green house (it was kept closed too), which at night the heaters keep around 55-6o, never got above 60 degrees. The heaters were off but there was no heat gain from the sun. The only thing that happened was it did loose any heat. Today is a totally different situation. The low this morning at 6 am was 5 degrees. At 8 it reached 10 degrees. This is always at least 10 degrees below what ever the Chesterfield Area temperatures are. Down at the garden it is another 5 degrees cooler. The green house when it is that cold has at least 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch of ice on the inside of the plastic. It's from the condensation of the humidity in the green house. As I mentioned in earlier post the green house floor never freezes. Two inches above the floor the air can be anywhere from 18 degrees and higher. This morning it was 24 in the main green house. The sun is shinning brightly, by 9 o'clock it was 85 degrees in the main green house and 100 in the small green house. One of the space heaters does not have a thermostat on it had continued to heat the house. With the sun shining the heat was compounded. I opened the window and door in the small green house, turned on the window fan. I turned on the main green house's inside circulatory fans and opened the back door 6 inches. I went to do the farm chores and checked the temps after I finished. The main green house stayed at 85 degrees and the small green house had dropped to 85 degrees from 100 in 7 minutes. I will check it in an hour and do some watering of the beds. I need to get them nice and moist for when we transplant the lettuce to them in 2-4 weeks. Two hours had past when I got back down to the green house. The main green house with the back door open was 85 degrees. The inner green house with the door, and window open (the window fan on) had reduced to 74 degrees. The window is located about 10 feet from the back door. The fan has a strong enough pull to pull the cool air into the smaller house. the houses should be fine until late afternoon when the sun drops behind the hill to the west. I need to go down just before this and close everything up. The temps quickly drop to with in ten degrees of the outside temps.

Green house Pictures

We are getting ready to start working in the green house. These are a couple of looks back at the last two months of 2008. These are the snow peas we raised. The center of the green house is at least 13 feet tall. The top board you see peeking in the peas is 4 feet tall. The peas were trained on netting that is normally used for rolled baled hay. We only received a couple of meals from them even though they were covered with blooms. The zero days that hit the last of December froze the top half of the plants. They flopped over and suffocated the bottom of the row. In order to raise them we would have to have enough heat to keep the upper feet of the green house above freezing. This is not economically feasible.

This is our resident Yellow garden spider. Argiope auranita Typical Orb Weavers, Family Araneidae. They are considered common, but we hardly ever find one. This has to be the spider Charlotte was. They are fantastic weavers. She wove webs all over the green house and finally decided the potting rack was where she would hang her nest. We are hoping this will be the start of a whole squad of these delightful spiders.

I looked through the files for a better pix of the inner green house but was unable to find any. We still haven't found a way that is acceptable to anchor the plastic. Till we do, it will hang over. This coming spring we have to make sure there is west and overhead shade for it. The heat gets intense. We do have plenty of fan ventilation but what is a plus in winter, having the small green house inside the big green house, is a minus in the summer.

Thanks for stopping by, I have to head down to the green house to adjust the openings. the bright sun just came out and the sage and rosemary will be steamed (no we don't have an automated ventilation system...I am the automation).

Introducing Our Garden and Us

Heading home today from the state of Florida. I have told the Grands that it will probably be the last trip down here till Late fall. Gardening in St. Louis occupies me 24/7 during growing season.

This week in it was very cold here. I left very cold in St. Louis. In fact it was extremely cold. I believe this January is the coldest in at least 10 years.

We have a Green house that is 48 X 24. It is a hoop house with double poly. A small fan keeps it inflated with an insulating layer of air. We found a small thermometer that is battery operated at Walmart. It records the high, low temps and the current Temp. It also records the high, low and current reading of humidity. Each day twice a day we remove the battery to reset it.

We have found when the temps are at 20 to 32 degrees outside, the double poly only keeps the temps inside about 10 degrees difference through the night. When the temps dropped to 0 and the two days we had -12 and a week of -'s the temps inside never dropped lower than 18. During the day if it is bright sunshine outside the temps can reach 100 degrees inside. Wind does not seem to be a factor in the temps inside. On an very cold cloudy day when it is preparing for snow the temp can be counted on to be at least 50 degrees during the day with no auxiliary heat source. I believe the stored heat in the earth keeps the temps up during the night. The ground inside the green house never freezes. We have had at least a 1/4 inch thick layer of ice on the inside of the green house plastic due to the humidity accumulating.

Growing prolifically in the empty beds are those hated winter weeds, Henbit and Chickweed. We don't mind the chickweed in the green house because we pull some every day to feed to the 6 Hens we have. They have done quite well in this cold weather. Producing 4-5 eggs almost every day. The Henbit though, geepers, does anyone know of a natural eradication of either one of these plants. Henbit is a perennial pain in the back side. Chickweed gets out of hand so quickly and even though it is an annual it seeds and grows in all weather. The only time I have seen it thwarted is in hot and dry, but those seeds stay sleeping till more advantageous living conditions come around.

I haven't access to pictures till I return home. Or I would post some now.

We have a smaller hoop house inside the large green house. It is 9X16. It is not a double poly. It is on a 2 ft high base that is insulated. The base walls are constructed with out door plywood, which is painted with enamel outdoor paint. There is batt insulation in the walls. We used a heavy gauge plastic to cover the hoops with. The end walls are a baffled plastic. We made it removable and put screens on the inside so we will have an environment that would be bug-less as it can be. Also so we would have summer ventilation. There is a fan in the north end to help pull in cool air.

We have been keeping my over flow of house plants in the small house. Things like Hibiscuses, crotons and avocado trees. There is a 6 ft row of 2 feet high rosemary which is over 6 years old and still growing fabulously (I have had trouble with powdery mildew on it. We keep a fan blowing on it constantly.) If anyone has a cure or preventative let me know. I tried spraying baking soda water on some rosemary that I had outside this summer and it turned black within 24 hours and died. (I use baking soda to prevent black spot and powdery mildew on my roses.)

We are using space heaters to heat the small green house. I don't know if it is economical but we had no other planned source of heat. We didn't even now if the little house inside the big house would be able to retain enough heat to have the house plants in. This is our first year with the inner house. We will have another heating set up by next year. It was a rush job at the end of last year.

The rosemary that is 6 years old has been previously only covered with heavy covers and three lamps underneath to keep the area from freezing. being our last few winters were on the warmish side it suffice to keep it alive. When spring came it recuperated toute suite. This year in the new inner green house it is acting like it is in the Mediterranean. Growing fabulously.

I planted some tricolor sage in the smaller house (I haven't been able to winter it over in the st. Louis area.) So far it is doing great, hope I will be able to take cuttings from it when I get home this week. There is also a plant of Bergarten sage in there and I will be treated to some beautiful sage blooms soon.

Have to run to catch a plane. Hope to return with pictures tomorrow.

Sheepish