Hello, I'm envious of your ability to keep relatively warm temps in there without much supplemental heat.

You'll have to decide whether or not it will be worthwhile to try to grow warm-temp vegetables like peppers, tomatos, and cucumbers in there. They would definitely need supplemental heat, especially important would be root-zone heating to keep the soil mass warmer. It certainly can be done.

I would NOT attempt to dig pepper plants in the fall, though. While it can be done, the setback to them would be fairly significant. Instead, I'd just grow some in large planters and bring them in when frost threatens. Then, you'd be all set with those.

Cool season vegetables, primarily greens and herbs, possibly root crops like radishes and carrots, would be a piece of cake in your setup.

The main things to watch out for are insect problems, aphids, etc., and fungal disease problems. Disease can be the biggest problem because of the lack of much airflow and the high humidity. Running a couple of small fans to promote air movement helps, and you may need to use fungicide dusts or sprays periodically.

I have 2 greenshouses, 10 x 12 and 10 x 32, but I simply can't afford to heat them in Michigan winters. Used to do that, but the cost of heat was more than the value of the plants overwintered (tropicals, patio plants, that sort of thing). Now, I use them in the spring for seed starting, and in the summer to grow crops like okra, cotton, etc. which benefit in my climate from the extra heat. I have 4 laying hens spending the winter in the larger greenhouse, but they'll be bummed out when they have to go back to their outdoor, summer accomodations in April, since they seem to love it in there, it's their little winter spa.

ah,thats cool. I have chickens too. I have 21 hens and two roosters...lol...mine are not allowed in my GH though! I had the GH open today and walked back to my house to get something and when I got back they had all helped themselves in, pecking around at some new potted plants I just got! lol. They can be a pest sometimes, but they are funny and do keep me laughing. Now to figure out some type of chicken wire "screen" door so that I can keep ventalation going good on warmer days AND keep the chickens OUT. lol.

Thanks for the info on winter GH gardening. I will definately plant several bell pepper plants in containers, and a few bush type variety tomatoes. I just started a bunch of seed today.... a few varieties of each... bell peppers, brocolli, eggplant, celery, parsley, sage, fennel, a bunch of daisy seed and a few more things that are escaping memory right now. I would have started more, but I was short seed trays. I'm so excited to start planting this year. Last year was our first year at this property and my first chance to ever have a really nice large garden... so now this year I am syked to try out a bunch of different heirloom varieties and a few more types of veggies too. We have a farmers market stand on the property and I'm hoping to grow enough to sell a bit on weekends or something. =)

It's fantastic that you have a big greenhouse. I am in Virginia, too, & last fall I bought 2 4'x8' pop-up greenhouses shaped like little pup tents, & they worked very well for me. I planted mache, claytonia, cress, tatsoi, beets, radishes, carrots, turnips, chard, spinach, arugula, and many different lettuces. The radishes did well, the turnips and beets not so well, and the carrots were a total bust, but all the green stuff just grew & grew. I picked stuff for a salad every single day (I'm eating salad as I write this). Even when the temp went down to single digits for 5 days in a row, everything kept thriving, even without supplemental heating. I got all my inspiration from Eliot Coleman's book Four Season Harvest, & it was so easy and gratifying that I can't imagine not doing the same thing every winter. Good luck with yours.

P.S. If you don't have Eliot Coleman's book already, it's the Bible!

Sounds great,looking forward to gardening all year.

Eliot Coleman - read him for sure. Inspirational AND practical advice from someone who has and is doing it!

Garden web - greenhouse.
This post is mainly for Katfried. I read that you have two pop up tent greenhouses and would like to know where you have gotten them. I also want to start a greenhouse - obviously not this year - and all I need is to find the right direction in which to go. I just happened to stumble upon this site - while trying to find out if it's possible to plant fennel in a greenhouse. Any good information - especially where to get inexpensive green houses would be appreciated. Thank you.

Lucia, I ordered a 7X12' "greenhouse" (hoophouse, really) from Amazon for $70.00. I have also seen them on Ebay for about that same price. They also make them in smaller and larger sizes.

Hope this helps,
Jan

Can not believe you had such good weather INSIDE you winter GH. I Believe you are telling the truth, it is not what I though would be true. Guess that what I get for thinking instead of doing things for myself.
I have a 18 feet X 18 feet loop house style green house frame.
I was going to cover it with 6 or 10 mil plastic green house cover. But did not want the big heating bill that a large GH would use. The hoops are individual ribs so I could use 2 or all 10 of them. 3 ribs would be 6 feet X 18 feet,because of the hoop style you can not have plant racks or you will have unused space behind the racks, near the edge of the hoop.
Thank you for the information & zone.

My husband has promised to build a greenhouse for me from materials left here on our property by the former owners. It will be 16 feet long as there are 2 4 x 8 sheets of heavy tempered glass that he will design and build around. It will attach to the south wall of our stucco garage so will have good sun all winter and have a little bit of sun protection during the hottest part of the summer with a palo verde tree directly west of it. Good eastern exposure. I realize in my climate that cooling the greenhouse will be more of a consideration that heating it. We will have to have evaporative cooling, whether portable or thru the wall I dont know yet. Looking forward to the process, but I must be patient. He is retired now and seems to have so much less time to do things that when he was working. Go figure.

Hi and thanks for sharing guys.
I successfully overwinter Collard greens, Kale and Swiss Chard that I transplant into a 8'x12' hoop GH... but i know from experience that everything stops solid at a certain point in winter. I just ordered a clear solar pool cover which is like durable bubble wrap and will try using this to insulate the growing area like a hoop GH inside a the GH or possibly make it the outer skin. But I see that without sufficient heat, like after a cloudy day, there is little point in insulation. The extra cover could, however, make supplemental heat sources economical or realistic.
I like the strategy of using large thermal mass, like water barrels or rock to store heat energy from the day for slow release at night. Plants could grow directly above the heat storage area. I have a second hand solar water heating panel that I could put in a loop with the barrels... then I would also need a pump, antifreeze mix, a DIY heat exchanger to heat the water in the barrels and ..a temperature difference box with sensors to operate the pump at the right times.! Rather complex and somewhat expensive...?.
A great design I came across in PA... a wood fired hot tub inside the GH - what a treat!
Final thoughts on winter GH - build a well insulated one onto the house so that it maintains at room temp and adds heat and veg to the home.
Happy winter and fresh veg to all.

Maybe to cool and not enough Light out this way?

I have a 10 x 20 x8 greenhouse that is a plastic vinyl cover style similar to a portable garage. We're zone 8a, in the mountains of central California and saw temps down to 22 degrees in December.

We set it up as a greenhouse inside of a greenhouse. We have a 5x10 raised bed that we cover at night with survival blankets (high quality reusable, 5x7ft size $18 each, sewn together to make a larger cover) and heat with old fashioned Christmas lights and when cold, a small heater that has a very low thermostat shut off temp. We also have a 4x4ft table top that has a mini greenhouse over the top that we also cover with a survival blanket to reflect the Christmas tree lights back inside.

I have 3 large tomato plants and 3 cherry tomatoes in there. I have toms every day. We also have a Japanese eggplant that is producing fruit we should be able to harvest in about a month, a regular eggplant also with baby eggplants on it. We have hot chili peppers I'm harvesting right now. We also have bush beans, but they're at the end of their life cycle - still alive but pretty tired.

We have 3 mini bell peppers, two were hit pretty hard by a mildewy substance and aphids, the other is still doing well (2 different beds) but the bad ones produced up until about the end of December. We also have the typical cold weather kale, swiss chard, cabbage, and the like as well as plenty of lettuce, onion and cilantro (LOVE salsa and we're still making it fresh).

It only takes me 7 minutes to close up the greenhouse at night and 5 minutes to open things up in the morning and we're not seeing a huge jump in the electric bill. It seems like the heater comes on no more than for a couple minutes and the survival blankets trap that heat for a long time. The heater is on a stepping stone at soil level so the roots are keeping warm as well.

Hope this helps :-) I'm not sure if these links will post pictures but I'm giving it a try
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