Real food? - Mini vent.

I'm thinking about Ireland = iffy weather, rains a lot. A greenhouse could offer a more controlled environment, but if I have stuff in posts, I can move it around easily, in and out and grow stuff on window sills, etc. I want to try growing strawberries over there. I don't know what else would work, I'll have to go visit a few garden centres, talk to people over there and experiment with a few things.
 
All my herbs are in pots. Tomatoes do best in pots that can be moved to a greenhouse here.

Mom does peppers in pots, squash (zucchini and spaghetti), peas, and beans.
 
goatgurl said:
DD lucky you, i have no basement so the greenhouse is my only choice for winter. and the greenhouse is small. I'm going to try a zucchini just for grins and giggles. also going to have spinach and lettuce in containers. i have the jalapeno pepper plants that Choco chewed down to a nub but are coming back nicely and am also going to try a couple of tomato plants too. going to drag some of my herbs in pots in there too and i'll pretty much be out of room.
@sumi for several years my mom grew tomatoes and peppers in 5 gal. buckets on her porch and they worked well. i am able to get 5 gal buckets with lids for $1 from a guy who has car wash soap in them so this year I'm going to fill buckets with water and put the lids on and line the walls of the greenhouse with them to hold heat, put wire shelves over the buckets and put the plant containers on them except for the buckets the zucc's and the tomatoes are in. What you think DenimDeb, will it work? this is the first year for me to try this so i'll keep youall posted.
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Can you paint the buckets a flat black? This way, they'd absorb the heat better, and probably retain it longer.

My problem is my greenhouse is actually too big. I have not found a way that I can easily heat it. I'm hoping that the rocket mass heater I'm planning on building will do the trick. And I plan on putting up a tube fluorescent light fixture in there to give the plants some extra light. From what I've read, they do just as good a job providing light as the regular grow lights do. I'd go out when hubby leaves for work to turn the light on, then turn it off once the sun is up.
 
Denim Deb said:
My problem is my greenhouse is actually too big. I have not found a way that I can easily heat it. I'm hoping that the rocket mass heater I'm planning on building will do the trick. And I plan on putting up a tube fluorescent light fixture in there to give the plants some extra light. From what I've read, they do just as good a job providing light as the regular grow lights do. I'd go out when hubby leaves for work to turn the light on, then turn it off once the sun is up.
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Do you have old Christmas lights? There's a lady in my mom's neighborhood who starts her plants in her garage during the winter and puts old Christmas lights under/around the pots and somehow they heat up the plants/dirt?? I'm honestly not sure how it works but somehow it does...
 
old Christmas lights work the same as old light bulbs.. grab one after it has been on a while.... give off a lot of heat. a hot water system may be a way to heat your green houses. I would worry that the buckets of water will give up their heat very quickly. guess it depends on your weather there.
 
in the US it is illegal to sell wild meat. the elk and venison found in the grocery store is farm raised. For anyone that wants to hunt but doesn't know how I would recommend talking to local butchers that process wild meat to introduce you to a hunter or two that would teach you.
 
In the book Four Season Gardening, the author uses hoop tunnels inside his unheated greenhouse to grow cool season veggies all winter long (he lives in Maine), rather than spend the money and time trying to heat the greenhouse enough to grow warm season crops in winter. By using two layers of plastic (the greenhouse and the hoop tunnel) he's just extending the cool fall and spring seasons with a minimum of effort and expense.
If you just want to start seedlings for transplanting later, a hot bed is an inexpensive alternative to a greenhouse. You can use an electric cable or heating mat to warm the soil for the seeds, or you can go the old-fashioned route and use fresh, hot manure.
 
I don't have the old Christmas lights. But, if I can make a rocket mass heater and if it works, it won't cost me anything to heat it. W/all the trees that I have in the yard, and w/the woods next door, I can get all the scrap wood I want.
 
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