Yesterday was the shortest day of the year, how many crops will grow in 9 hrs 42 minutes of sun light in the winter? Sun angle is 34 degrees.
During the summer we have about 15 hours of sun light.
I was thinking about building a green house to grow tomatoes all winter but now I think this is a bad idea.
I think winter is the time to grow winter crops and summer is the time to grow summer crops.
What is a green house good for?
https://itouchmap.com/latlong.html
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Gary350
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Yesterday was the shortest day of the year 9 hrs 42 minutes.
Last edited by Gary350 on Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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OROZCONLECHE
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dustyrivergardens
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Need to borrow some ambition?dustyrivergardens wrote:yep me to I am going to get a little hoop house up some time this winter I have just about everything I need except for the ambition...
Send a SASE.I have all the ambition and energy in the world! Just never the $$ to buy all the things I need for all the projects I'd like to try.
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DoubleDogFarm
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dustyrivergardens
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lol I am a truck driver a 70 hour week is the norm I am a single father of a teenage daughter thats tough just to hit her activity's I raise a garden and put away the fruits of my bounty. as far as money for projects most of my projects I build out of the scrap I find so that is zero. Look around you might be able to do all kinds of projects with no cost at all or very little. as far as ambition make me a 30 hr day and I can get to those little projects.GardenRN wrote:Need to borrow some ambition?dustyrivergardens wrote:yep me to I am going to get a little hoop house up some time this winter I have just about everything I need except for the ambition...
I have all the ambition and energy in the world! Just never the $$ to buy all the things I need for all the projects I'd like to try.
A fruit crop like tomatoes is probably not a very good choice for a winter greenhouse.
There in Tennessee, Gary, you may have 9 hours and 42 minutes of sunlight - if you aren't too close to a mountain
. Here, near the 49th parallel, I've got 8 hours and 26 minutes. Since the horizon is not level, it is more like 8 hours.
The angle of the sun is less than 18° at high noon! Take into account the angle of the sun and the amount of haze on the horizon -- there's very little sunlight even on clear days and there aren't very many clear days here during the winter.
In my imagination when I built my backyard greenhouse, I was using it thru the winter. I was thinking of potted ornamentals and that their value would pay for the heat. Perhaps that would be true but my winter market for them disappeared even before I had the opportunity to give it a try.
Just getting the plants to flowering would have required supplemental lighting. A crop that does not need to reach that level of maturity would take less light, and time.
For me, it probably makes little sense to pump heat into my greenhouse during the winter. If it was of a different design, I think Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman may provide a good guide. Notice that Coleman is calling it Four Season Harvest and NOT Four Season Growing.
Coleman's location may be colder than here but no point in his home state of Maine is further north and I doubt if he has as many cloudy days. Still, he is saying he grows his winter crop in the fall and HARVESTS it during the winter.
Coleman's crops are somewhat obscure varieties of greens that he was selling to high-end restaurants. All of those varieties can take quite a bit of frost and I don't remember that he was heating his greenhouse. The plants were under row covers inside the greenhouse. They were capable of surviving a Maine winter like that. Whether they did any actual growing during December and January is real questionable.
My own greenhouse is set up for plants in containers and in flats. It is not really well suited for growing things in the ground. Right now, there is about a dozen, potted rosemary plants in there.
At this moment, it is 11:30am and 23°F outdoors. The sun is a bright orb in a hazy, southern sky and the temperature in the unheated greenhouse is right at 32° .
Steve
ETA: if you want to check the angle of your sun, look at the elevation number here after entering the city. you can change the time of day:
https://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/azel.html
There in Tennessee, Gary, you may have 9 hours and 42 minutes of sunlight - if you aren't too close to a mountain
. Here, near the 49th parallel, I've got 8 hours and 26 minutes. Since the horizon is not level, it is more like 8 hours.The angle of the sun is less than 18° at high noon! Take into account the angle of the sun and the amount of haze on the horizon -- there's very little sunlight even on clear days and there aren't very many clear days here during the winter.
In my imagination when I built my backyard greenhouse, I was using it thru the winter. I was thinking of potted ornamentals and that their value would pay for the heat. Perhaps that would be true but my winter market for them disappeared even before I had the opportunity to give it a try.
Just getting the plants to flowering would have required supplemental lighting. A crop that does not need to reach that level of maturity would take less light, and time.
For me, it probably makes little sense to pump heat into my greenhouse during the winter. If it was of a different design, I think Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman may provide a good guide. Notice that Coleman is calling it Four Season Harvest and NOT Four Season Growing.
Coleman's location may be colder than here but no point in his home state of Maine is further north and I doubt if he has as many cloudy days. Still, he is saying he grows his winter crop in the fall and HARVESTS it during the winter.
Coleman's crops are somewhat obscure varieties of greens that he was selling to high-end restaurants. All of those varieties can take quite a bit of frost and I don't remember that he was heating his greenhouse. The plants were under row covers inside the greenhouse. They were capable of surviving a Maine winter like that. Whether they did any actual growing during December and January is real questionable.
My own greenhouse is set up for plants in containers and in flats. It is not really well suited for growing things in the ground. Right now, there is about a dozen, potted rosemary plants in there.
At this moment, it is 11:30am and 23°F outdoors. The sun is a bright orb in a hazy, southern sky and the temperature in the unheated greenhouse is right at 32°
.Steve
ETA: if you want to check the angle of your sun, look at the elevation number here after entering the city. you can change the time of day:
https://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/azel.html
we have lots of things growing still.
onions
garlic
leeks
lettuce
kale
broccoli
cabbage
chard
beets
shallots
brussel sprouts
on top of the winter fruits like strawbetty tree
the late late apples
chestnuts were dropping all this month
a lot of our citrus in the greenhouses are ripening
the persimmons are dropping daily giving there sweet delicious jelly like insides
a lot of the wild greens are just starting to come up and things like bittercress are excellent when weeks old.
temps are down in the low 20s every night.
onions
garlic
leeks
lettuce
kale
broccoli
cabbage
chard
beets
shallots
brussel sprouts
on top of the winter fruits like strawbetty tree
the late late apples
chestnuts were dropping all this month
a lot of our citrus in the greenhouses are ripening
the persimmons are dropping daily giving there sweet delicious jelly like insides
a lot of the wild greens are just starting to come up and things like bittercress are excellent when weeks old.
temps are down in the low 20s every night.
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DoubleDogFarm
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soil,
How large is your Arbutus unedo and what is a typical harvest.
Had some of my brother's chestnut harvest last night. They're like little sweet potatoes.
Eric
How large is your Arbutus unedo and what is a typical harvest.
Had some of my brother's chestnut harvest last night. They're like little sweet potatoes.
Eric
Last edited by DoubleDogFarm on Fri Dec 23, 2011 10:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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OROZCONLECHE
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its about 6ft tall and 6ft wide right now, id say its going to end up around 8-10' eventually. yield is very good. and its nice they ripen over a good period of time rather than all at once. problem is people who are so used to grocery store type fruits(shiny, smooth, well known) are turned off mostly by the texture. though most people end up just shoving them into their mouths lol. I love them and find it a great winter forage while out in the forest garden.soil,
How large is your Arbutus unedo and what is a typical harvest.
Had some of my brother's chestnut harvest last night. They're like little sweet potatoes.
Eric
I love chestnuts, such a great tree. I got some I made into chestnut flour I'm going to bake bread with some of it later today.
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DoubleDogFarm
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gixxerific
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