I planted my "collection" (windmills, needles, sabals, pindos, European fans, plus a couple of other things, a live oak, an Aucuba japonica, a Nandina, and a couple of Musa [basjoo and sikkimensis] and Musella) INSIDE my lexan and brick greenhouse. It ix 12 feet long x 10 feet wide, a lean-to on the south side of my shed, full sun, with a brick wall about 2.5 feet tall all around, and the interior wall that seperates it from the shed is dark brown brick, with a storm door in between.

They did great in there this summer, happier, in fact, than they would have been outside in our "year without a summer" cold.

I did this with the intention of wintering them like Artictropical does with his palms in Utah. Foamboard boxes with lightbulbs for added heat.

So, I'm in the process of putting the boxes around them, right in the greenhouse.

I wish I could afford to heat the whole thing the proper way, but I used to do that, and it was just way too expensive --- cost way more than just buying the plants new every spring would.

I am going to have three seperate boxes, due having 3 seperate planting beds.

The large box is going to be 9.5 feet long X 3 feet high X 2.5 feet deep. (The bannanas are taller than this, but will just have to be cut to fit inside -- I consider them sort of disposable, anyway). 72 total cubic feet

The other two boxes are EACH going to be 3 feet long X 3 feet wide X 6 feet high. With my two taller trachies, I'm going to tie up the foliage and gently bend it to fit inside, which seems not to be a problem. 54 cubic feet EACH.

The boxes are constructed of R4 foamboard lined with R30 fiberglass insulation, for a total R34. Plus whatever insulation the lexan and brick structure gives. Plus whatever solar gain I get on those rare, sunny days over the winter.

Winter minimums have been in the -10 range in the past 2 decades, with the rare dip to -12 to -14, I'd say one winter out of 10. Last really extreme was -25 to -30 in February of 1994, but the NWS called that a "once in a century" event -- hope they're right.

So, my questions are -- what type of lights, and what wattage?

1) TYPE OF LIGHTS: They have special "heat lamp" bulbs in 125 and 250 watt size. Would I be correct in assuming that these generate more heat and less visible light per watt spent than a regular bulb, and so would be actually more "efficient" to operate, in the sense that the goal is maximum heat output? Or, should I use regular incandescent bulbs? Or, try wrapping each plant in Xmas tree lights (C3 I believe they are)?

2) WATTAGE: How many lights -- what wattage in each box do you think? Do you think one 125 watt heat lamp in each of the smaller boxes, and two in the bigger box, would be enough?

Suggestions PLEASE! And thank you SO MUCH for any help you can offer with this.

I wasn't sure, even after rereading some of his posts, what kind he was using in Utah.

By energy efficient, do you mean the Compact Florescents, the little spiral things?

They don't really put out much heat at all, so if those work for him, that gives me a lot of hope for my little setup.

Can you post a pic of your G-house set up?

I figure I need about 40 degrees of possible temperature gain, in order to get them through a -10 degrees F night.

This weekend, I'll test it out.

Jim, this is all INSIDE a lexan and brick lean-to greenhouse.

I'll try to post some pictures this weekend when I have more time, and daylight. I may post them on another site with links, I'm on dial up at home and it's very hard to post pictures here that way.

I probably would be ok with most of these things to around 20 degrees. I'm just thinking of the stupid bananas.

I might just go ahead and dig them up. One more winter in the basement won't kill them. Maybe I'll just leave the dumb basjoo as an experiment.