Greenhouse is up... now what can I grow in zone 5?

Right now we have spinach, kale, and some lettuce in the greenhouse and they're all doing well. DH just planted more seeds on Sunday, kale, lettuce. At some point they will stop getting bigger, but won't die.

Uber!!!

That looks great, Bob! I want a green house someday. I have to learn to actually garden first though... My first two gardens have been dismal failures due to lack of weeding. A serious lack of weeding. Next year I'm going with four raised beds. I should be able to keep up with that much.

RedTartan

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Add one to one and a half zones for the poly and solar and another for the radiant heat from the building. That doesn't meant the temp isn't going to go below that "new" zone but it shouldn't happen often. Keep in mind that zones are average, not set in stone.

I grow kale, claytonia, cold tolerant lettuces, spinach, leeks, turnip (done in January), kohlrabi, beet greens, tatsoi, radishes, Swiss chard and bok choi. It's a late start now but seed is cheap and it's worth a try. If you plant seeds and they don't germinate don't give up on them. They might germ in February when the sun is higher in the sky and the days are longer.

I don't heat my greenhouses or use additional light so I can't help with that.

You do need to be concerned about snow load. Famous last words - it'll be fine! It wasn't fine, it was flat. oops. You need to watch for weight. Conduit and pvc will snap if they can't bend. Watch for build up of even light snow. It blocks sunlight. And watch for ice coming off the roof. It will slice through poly easily.

It depends on what you plant. Nearly mature broccoli won't do as well as young kale. Young cell walls are more pliable than mature. Mature cell walls are much more likely to burst from freezing than the walls of young cells.

You can save yourself the expense and some work by growing cold tolerant greens.

Growth will end in mid December and pick up again in early February. The idea behind this kind of growing is to have your plants well enough established to harvest during those months even though they aren't growing.
For your son, absolutely. Cool project! Practically speaking, no. They aren't worth the space they take up. I grew a few last year just to see if I could then I turned them into the soil. You have to grow a lot of peas to harvest enough to eat. You'll put more food on the table by sticking to leafy greens.

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Robin

Thanks Joe, I will definitely be picking your brain. Do you have a blog or anything? I will be using planters. I was thinking of a smaller 'greenhouse' plastic drape over seedlings with a 100 watt bulb under it also. What do you think about that?

When it gets cold enough to actually run the woodburner 24/7 I'll crack the door open and supplement the heat. We usually have an excess of heat. The excess heat into the house is what we've been doing the past couple of days. Do you have anything for heat absorption during the day? Black barrels/water or anything?

I keep reading about him... I'll have to get his books.

Since it's attached to the house, I am worried about the smell of a chicken tractor/coop. I am rethinking the rabbits in there... they smell. LOL. I was thinking of putting them above a tub of soil and letting the poo drop into it.

Is your greenhouse attached and are you supplementing light or heat?

Weeding? if you do raised beds the right way, you won't have to week TOO much (still some)

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The conduit is the pvc underground electric type. It's flexible so it bends to it's own shape. It's different from pvc pipe.

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The greenhouse is not attached. It is on the east side of the house. It's one of those cathedral shaped greenhouses. We don't supplement, other than water. We use row covers when there will be a frost.

A previous house we had, DH put a greenhouse on the south side of the house (ick, the front). Timber and glass. It was not on a porch, like yours. Everything was in the ground. I planted a little spot with tulips, and we had tulips in late winter when all of the outdoors was covered in snow. It was really too hot in the summer. The ones we have now have good ventilation and are set up so the breeze will move through when the ends are taken off.

Amy transplanting some onions.

Robin, thanks for all the good information in your post!

I made those shelves out of folding closet doors.

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I had a similiar lean to made out of PVC. Between the slickness of the plastic covering, the arc, and the internal temp difference, not much snow builds up, even during blizzards. Worse case, give a slight push from the inside and watch the avalanche! While the design worked well, the outside plants took a beating from all the snow which piled up at the base.

My greenhouse is totally passive...no extra light or heat. The greens grow with very little effort on my part aside from an occasional watering...which isn't much in the winter. That said, they should do even better with the extra heat & light. I do have a small PV panel connected to a battery pack which I use for a couple of 12Vdc vent fans. The fans push the heat out from the greenhouse into the house.

Great discussion everyone!

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CJ

Yeah, I thought we had lettuce seed here, but I can't find it. I've never had Pak Choi, going to have to buy some of that. I hope I can find some 'out of season' seed packs of cold type plants here soon.

We are going to build a freestanding greenhouse (when we get the funds) and I want to actually keep chickens and goats in it and still grow things. Just to experiment a bit having them heat it up. Of course I'll have to watch the temp so the animals wouldn't overheat on sunshiny days.

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Cool. Looks good. I would suggest not heating the greenhouse. Instead let it heat your house. During the day, open the greenhouse to the house. At night close the opening. Put some thermal mass into the greenhouse to help it through the nights. Use raised beds on top of the thermal mass. Focus on planting crops that will do well in the temperatures you'll have rather than heating. Tomatoes can over winter the worst of the winter right down to freezing but instead focus on broccoli, kale, lettuce, spinach, beets, etc that do well at colder temperatures.

We did this for years and it worked great providing about half of our home's heat here in the mountains of northern Vermont - zone 3.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
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