This is my custom 8x12' greenhouse in zone 9a. Because of the way I designed and built it, it only costed around $400 and has about 200 square feet of total surface space, or about $2 per square foot, which is extremely low compared to prefab models. It is heated by four 200w chill chaser bulbs on timers, it gives me reliable gains of 20+ degrees warmer than outside on bitter nights when frost rolls in. It cost about $20 a month to operate.

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When I said it only cost $20 a month to operate, thats only for 2-3 months out of the year. When the danger of frost is present.

Cactus that is fantastic. I think i saw an ethiopean black banana. Is the AE-AE a pretty strong grower? Hows pup production? Slow grower?

Wow, CF - that is a fine looking greenhouse. Although, I would love to have one like yours Planty, just to winter over a few things. I can't imagine that in zone 9b you even need one. Do zone 9b'rs get frost? I never woulda coulda thought it.

Cactus in 7b, I can totally understand needing one. CF - did you build it yourself, was it a kit, what?

Susan

Hi susan. Yes you need it in zones 9a and 9b unfortunately
=( Even a light frost will kill or maime most tropicals. I average about 4 light frosts and 2 hard frosts each winter.
Equally important is keeping the plants warm enough so they don't stop growing, because if they do they can rot easily.

Here are some photos of specific plants that are in my greenhouse. For an "overview", you can go to my website:
www.bihaisrainforest.4t.com

However, the webpage is WAY out of date...none of the plants are small like that anymore...they are mostly all 2-4x that size. Some that were 8-10 ft tall are now brushing the ceiling (17-19.5 ft). I have had to remove some things, like the stands of Heliconia psitticorum x spathnocircinata Golden Torch and Golden Torch Adrian, because they were taking over. I also had to remove all of the huge stands of Heliconia rostrata I had in the front....again, taking over. I put all that stuff back in pots, it blooms fine in a container so no wasting valuable GH space on it.
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Here are 3 more pix: my Jade Vine in bloom, Yellow Rattleshaker Calathea (a GREAT plant) and Heliconia caribaea "Prince of Darkness"

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Planty, there doesn't appear to be any ventilation on your greenhouse or am I just not seeing it? Also, what are you using to cover the walls?

Good eye! I usually open the door in the daytime. But I use a small fan. It doesn't have to be much circulation, just enough to discourage mildew, mold & leaf melt. The outer is wraped with shadecloth and in the winter i wrap the whole thing with pallet wrap (like a jumbo seran wrap). So...Its a greenhouse in the winter and then i take the plastic down and turn it into a shadehouse in the spring. This method cut the total cost of the project by 40% because the hard plastic sheets are extremely expensive and the plexiglass is even more expensive.

CF - After a second look I spotted that variegated ginger peeking around the corner, too!

Bihai - what can I say? I mean, what can any of us say? You are a superb grower, far beyond the master level. Love the tacca---wish I could grow it, but have heard how temperamental they can be. THe Jade vine, the heloconias, is that an anthurium I see in the pond pic?

Planty - did you look around a lot for materials? I have heard (now I don't know for sure), that Habitat for Humanity has tons of materials at discount prices. People donate, builders donate, when they tear down buildings/houses. I know a lot of people who have gotten doors, windows, other things for cheap cheap.

Susan

OH WOW!!! Bahai, such fantastic plants. I only dream of ever having a pink torch ginger to bloom. And the heliconia rostrata is another dream. You do grow beautiful plants.
Planty, no I don't have a black banana. The AeAe is very slow no pups and I've had it 3 summers. I need to repot and pour on the fertilizer.
Susan, The details of my greenhouse are on my page.
It is a Florian 32x37. We bought it as a custom kit and were going to put it up ourselves but after 8 months we finally had someone to do it. He did it in 14 days.
You will have one someday if you keep at it. My first greenhouse was my entire house. You could barely walk thru it in the winter. The I got a 10x12. It was only good for seed starting. All my plants were way to big to go in there except for a few cactus.

Susan, my design is so efficent I was able to get new building materials all from Lowes and stay well within my budget of $400-$500. So it would not be cost effective for me to spend time scavenging used, inferior materials.

-->If i happen to come across something I can recycle, by all means I will. But I won't go out of my way to hunt it down.

LOL the little greenhouse pond doesn't even look like that anymore! That photo was taken in August or September before I started moving in summering plants. Its COMPLETELY surrounded on 3 sides by bromeliads, anthuriums and other plants that were summering outdoors, and is completely filled with lasia spinosa, variegated crinums and Crytospermia at the moment. There was one poor goldfish in there who must have thought he had the equivalent of the Pacific Ocean to swim in, now with all the aquatics back in he has a maze of pots to go around. I guess I have gottn about 80% of my "outdoor summer tourist" plants re-greenhoused. We are getting our first dip into the 40's on Tuesday so I will be bringing in the rest, or at least bringing them up to the greenhouse doors...they are what I call "push and shove" plants....they stay out til the very last minute and then get pushed and shoved into the GH wherever they can sit just for the duration of the cold, when it gets back over 50 they come back out. I learned (FINALLY) that its too time consuming and back breaking to more a LOT of stuff in and out, so before November,I make sure everyone except the push and shove plants has a permanent winter home until March, where it sits and does not move unless it starts to decline for some reason...then I experiment with moving it til its happier is a new place.

I'm still finding it hard to believe that you guys get down into the 40s! I keep thinking of you being no lower than the 70s year round. I had no idea you get that cool. I am thinking 40s as being way cold here in Oklahoma, but in Florida????? It is getting down to 37 here tonight. Time to bring in my pots. I think they are dry enough. I'll wash off the tubers this week and let them dry before wrapping in saran wrap and/or storing in stockings.

Susan

Susan, here in north florida its a total different ballgame than south florida , its not uncommon to get down to 25 degrees. I am located below Jacksonville and east of Gainesville. I have a Bismark palm I will be watching this winter, but last winter is survived like a champ.

Why dont you have your HB build you a small one???

Ditto on the 25 degrees. We can have our first frost here in Nov and our last in Mar. It's different every year, of course. Last year we had one hard frost in Nov, then nothing the rest of winter. I'm putting up a temporary greenhouse next week for plants that I've been collecting for a microclimate and others that can't be planted just yet (we're redoing every square inch of everything!). It'll be nice actually- I have some seedlings going of this and that, and I'll be able to keep them going good inside the GH.

Yes, we do get frosts here in No FL, usually starting in Nov-Dec. But usually, the 40's hold off until mid to late November. Average first frost date here is I think November 15th or 20th, average last frost date is March 10th. 40's in October is pretty unusual. A few nights of scattered 50's is more usual in October. Most of the time on Halloween, the kids are sweltering in their costumes. We have had 70 degree Halloween nights before. But the good thing about North FL is, the cold comes but doesn't STAY. Cold fronts blow through and are gone. It may drop to 25 for a night in January, but usually the next day its 65 or better. Rapid warm up is the nice thing. And usually on Christmas day, I am in shorts and a T shirt BBQ-ing the brined turkey out by the pool on the grill. We do have to put up with some cold every winter, but March through November really makes up for it! Long, LONG growing season.

Planty - what's an HB? Whatever it is, I bet I don't have one.

Susan

I think it's a Honey Bunny. Or some type of close companion.

If HB= honey bun then DH= dum honey bun

HEy planty, quit calling me names! LOL

Well if the pastry fits...wear it! (And only it =)

Are you good at "propagation?"

Ignore the previous messages...my brain just kicked in.

Well, now I can understand how that other thread got started, Planty! LOL! Maybe you need to keep a generator on hand so you can kick start your brain before you log on??

Oh, and BTW - I definitely don't have an HB. But, I do have 4 HFs (honey felines)......and I don't know how good they are at constructing things....DEstructing things, yes.

Susan

It would take a rather large generator. My HF's are below. Single guy with cats wEiRd huh? Actually they were from a previous.....situation.

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Not that i don't love your cats planty, but i think this topic is straying a little of course.

great glasshouse pics so far! Bihai, what can i say? there is not one of those plants that isn't on my wishlist! Have you ever considered heating the pond and making it tropical? i was thinking of making mine a bit brackish (slightly salty) and adding some mudskippers! I love those wierd fish, freaks of evolution!

and cactusfreak, tyour's was the greenhouse i was takling about! brilliant stuff, but i can't see your pond??

Thank you. It's in the 2nd picture on the far left. Surrounded on the back wall with the bamboo fence. There is a terra-cotta pot that you can barely see and the water goes up the back of the pot and flows out the front. So many plants you can't really see it. But I have papyrus, parrots feather and water hyacinths and black magic elephant ears and picther plants. I want to build another one someday with an 8ft waterfall and a little foot bridge over it.

Actually, the pond stays the ambient air temp which is close to 60 at night and 80+ during the day, so it is tropical without being heated. I use it to overwinter tropical aquatic aroids

what kind of compost do you guys use in there? what i am planning to do is dig out huge pits where the beds are going to go, line them with weed suppressing membrane and then fill it in with some organic matter mixed in with loam and fertiliser. This way i can stop pests getting in and the treefrogs which will live in there from getting out.

I did absolutely nothing to amend the soil. Its just plain old Florida sand. Well draining. Like a sieve. I built a total of one raised bed in a corner, just for interest, but I filled it with the plain old sand from the original pond excavation. The soil may have been enriched on a very small scale by the wood chips that were left from some tree removel/stump grinding on the site before the structure went up, but not much. I have very few weeds, and I used no weed cloth...it only inhibits roots from spreading naturally. I do have toads (that burrow) green tree frogs, and at least 2 snakes (a black racer and a corn snake)that call the greenhouse home. I have found that the problem is not that the soil i snot enriched enough....its that the plants are too happy even without that. They are much much larger than I ever suspected they would get, and its hard to maintain them all. I have to use a 12 ft ladder to groom some of them and to spray Neem Oil from the top down.

Hen11 wrote:
(This way i can stop pests getting in and the treefrogs which will live in there from getting out.)

Then what are the treefrogs going to eat????

the colony of ants and beetles i'm introducing ;)

Hen11 - we do stray OT at times, but it's fun because I like to get to know everyone, too. I don't look for just their exceptional knowledge, but their exceptional personalities, too.

Susan

Roger has worked like a dog for a couple of weeks during what's supposed to be his "off time" to help me get the greenhouses ready for winter. He has given things a lot of thought and this year I will be able to offer a couple of friends a bit of space if they need it. What a relief not to have so many potted plants in way too cramped a space. I don't think I'll lose many now!

I made this page so I can show off some of the neat stuff he's done, click on the thumbnail to get there:

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Nigella - love that name by the way. Love your greenhouse and your plants. I noticed you have quite a few begonias, canes, rhizomatous, rexes. Is that a 'Looking Glass' I see in there? Do you also belong to the ABS, and do you order plants from Logee's or Kartuz?

Wow, I'd love to have a greenhouse, but energy costs are so un-affordable for me. And I WOULD have to have some heating in wintry, cold, windy, icy, dusty, hot, steamy, sweaty, bleached out Oklahoma. Ah, to sip a cool drink on the beach in the gulf!

Gorgeous pics. I want to know whether you get any interesting moths on that curtain when the lights on at night? I love moths and butterflies, too. Especially the sphinx and silk moths. You should get some really gorgeous creatures. I know a guy who sets up a sheet in his backyard, with minimal backlighting and draws in the moths at night for observation purposes only. I may have to try that next year. The caterpillars are so much fun and so fascinating, too.

Nice philos, too.

Susan

Hi Susan, thanks, I like nigella better than my real name, lol, I may sneak around and change it some day. I'm a bit of a hermit so not too many people will have to relearn what to call me!

Yes, I have a real "thing" for begonias for some reason, I just love the variety of shapes, textures, colors and sizes of the foliage. I do have 'Looking Glass' so that may be what you're seeing. There isn't a chapter of the ABS here or I would be a member; it's not as much fun if you don't have any fellow addicts handy.

Most of my begonias came as gifts or as trades, very few were actually purchased but the ones that were were bought locally. So many begonias won't tolerate the high heat combined with the high humidity here. Of all my begonias my favorite, hands down, is B.x rex-cultorum 'Cora Miller'. I love the way she looks like a "plain green" begonia until you look closer and see the play of reds, greens, golds, purples and cobalt blues in her large thin leaves. I'm truly enchanted by that one, then the second favorite(most of the time) is another rex called 'Harbor Lights', an almost black-leaved beauty with sprinkles of palest "ashes of roses" speckling. You can see some of them on my website if you'd like.

I have a very close friend who just moved back here a few months ago from Oklahoma, she would very much agree with you. As for me, I admire anyone who can grow anything anywhere besides in sticky, steamy Mobile, Al. lol, I feel like I have an unfair advantage in a lot of areas because Mobile is kind of like a great big terrarium most of the year.

Thanks for the kind words about the pictures! I'm so used to the moths we get that I don't pay them much attention. One we don't see much of is the Luna moth, there isn't much poison ivy in this area for the cats to feed on. The curtain isn't really a curtain, though, it's just the outside wall of the GH. I'll have to add a second page with pictures of the outside of each house soon. I'll post here when I get it done.