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KingTiff
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Location: North Eastern Ohio

Supplemental Lighting & Heat

My husband and I recently started a green house in hopes of eliminating the produce portion of our grocery bill. At the time being, in our green house, we have;

Tomatoes
Black Beans
Red Kidney Beans
Onion
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Peanuts
Carrots
Snap Peas
Romaine Lettuce
Bell Peppers
and Spinach

As it stands now, I've been watering them when the soil is dry to the touch and they're kept around 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Obviously, treating these vastly different plants all the same is going to cause major issues. But since I know just about nothing about food gardening, I figured this was at least a decent base line.
I have recently transplanted about half of my plants to bigger pots after being informed that I was probably choking their roots, and I have mixed perlite in with the topsoil I was using as potting soil and that seems to have done some good.
My problem is that winter is coming up and I'm going to need to start tricking my plants into thinking it's spring/summer year round. I am prepared to supplement heat and lighting, but I'm not exactly sure how to do it correctly. Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
-Tiff

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jal_ut
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Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Heating a greenhouse and lighting it through winter may well cost more than any produce would be worth.

If you can get some 50 gallon barrels, put them in the green house and fill them up with water, they will take on heat while the sun is out and release some heat after the sun goes down.

What is the floor of your green house? If it is the ground or soil that was on your lot, perhaps you can grow in that soil?

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Meatburner
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Location: SW MO zone 6b

King, do you now have a greenhouse and wanting to start the plants you listed now in your zone?

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rainbowgardener
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Per our previous discussionhttp://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic ... 47#p370647, I still think you need to start a thread in the Greenhouse forum WITH PICTURES of your greenhouse and set up and some of of your plants to show how they are doing. I don't think people can say much about how to add lighting without seeing your set up.

In general, lighting to do plants much good has to be very close to the plants, just a few inches away. But in a greenhouse it is a bit complicated, because you don't want your light fixtures to block the natural light, which is still important.

It is a good suggestion from jal_ut re the drums of water. They absorb heat better if the drums are painted black. Anything you can do with insulating any non-glass parts of your greenhouse and the north wall, and providing heat storage, like the drums, will help keep it from being prohibitively expensive to heat. If you aren't growing things in the floor of the greenhouse, laying down stone or concrete pavers can be another heat storage.

But even so, you should not think you are going to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in the dead of NE Ohio winter and save any grocery money. Tomatoes don't fruit when temps are below about 65. Most of the rest of your list is cool weather stuff, that will be ok if you can keep your greenhouse temp up in the 40's.

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KingTiff
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Location: North Eastern Ohio

Super Green Thumb; Yes, yes, I know I really need to post pictures and get this organized >.<
our setup really has been varying as we try to figure things out.
Meatburner, Yes. (Ps, Thank you for referring to me as ing, that makes me happy -^_^-)
jal_ut; You have a very good point.

After reading all of your comments, I will have to talk this through with my husband to see if trying to keep up the greenhouse through the winter is worth our efforts at all. Thank you all, I will get a proper, updated post with pictures up as soon as I can. You have all been very helpful
-Tiff

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rainbowgardener
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Hi Tiff - thanks for coming back and updating.

If you mean me, my screen name is rainbow gardener. Super green thumb is just a sort of rank of how many posts you have made, that the site automatically assigned. Thus you are New Member and Meatburner is Senior Member.

We didn't mean to be (too) discouraging. There are many reasons to grow your own veggies - for freshness, purity, wholesomeness, flavor, varieties you will never find in the supermarket, not contributing to CO2 and other pollution by buying veggies that have been shipped thousands of miles (e.g. much of the broccoli and cauliflower in the stores was grown in China or India), to learn the skills of growing, etc. etc.

It's just that cutting your bills may not be as easy as you thought. One problem is that farmers are paid so poorly and grocery is such a cut throat, narrow profit margin business, that food is sold really cheaply in the stores. Makes it harder for you to produce veggies for less than you can buy them for. BUT, if you already have bought the greenhouse, lights and heat mats, then you have spent the big money. So you might as well grow some things to recoup some of what you have spent. Once you have all the equipment, then the outlay is supplies-- potting soil, trays and pots, seeds, fertilizers--and energy cost to run the lights and heat. The lights have to run 16 hrs a day and the heat has to run 24 hrs and heat mats are pretty big power draws. When I was starting hundreds of plants every winter from seed, I was very conservative with the heat mats - I used two and just crowded things on them a lot. Then I moved the little plants off the heat as soon as they had a couple pair of true leaves and planted more stuff on the mats, assembly line fashion.

The supplies are cheap. Greenhousemegastore.com has lots of the trays and pots and other supplies for very reasonable prices. You can make your own potting soil from purchased ingredients. Seeds are cheap if you don't get carried away with buying the latest fancy new thing. You can buy seeds in bulk and store what you didn't use. Stored cool and dry it will last several years. mvseeds.com is one of the places that sells seeds in bulk, but not too much bulk (so you can buy an ounce or few ounces of seeds, which for most veggies is a LOT of seeds). Seed companies that sell to farmers sell by pounds.

Hope this helps you start figuring it all out. Start small, not expecting that you will make all your money back, but enjoy your home grown veggies! :)

Peter1142
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You could bring some of the smaller plants indoors and put them under a grow light, I.e. the bell peppers -- those are expensive in the winter! It would be cheaper than providing light & heat for an entire greenhouse.

I suggest reading up on preserving the harvest - canning, drying, freezing, etc. Then you can grow an abundant harvest and store it for winter.

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KingTiff
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Location: North Eastern Ohio

Thanks, Rainbow Gardener, I will pas that site name to my husband. We could use a good source for supplies.

He just reminded me the other day that we plan on using solar panels to supply the energy to run the lights and heat, and we're working on a compost bin to make our own soil to mix with pea pebbles to make potting soil, so once it's all properly set up, it should be darn near free to run. We still aren't sure, though, how long to run the supplemental lights during the winter and which plants need what in order to yield veggies. Some seem to be doing it on their own as if it's an age of the plant thing, and others just keep growing and haven't flowered yet. I understand some should be kept in cooler conditions as others prefer warm, but I just don't know how to get them all to properly bloom. I will post updated pictures of my set up in another reply right after this one.
Thanks,
-Tiff

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KingTiff
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Joined: Fri Aug 21, 2015 5:21 pm
Location: North Eastern Ohio

Pictures I promised!
Attachments
sick peanut plant, same thing, it was fine then it just kind of started to wilt one day.
sick peanut plant, same thing, it was fine then it just kind of started to wilt one day.
close shot of my sick bean plant, it just got all sad one day out of nowhere... I think it may have gotten too cold before we brought in the heaters
close shot of my sick bean plant, it just got all sad one day out of nowhere... I think it may have gotten too cold before we brought in the heaters
new gen in the back there, last 2 big pots in front ( 3 of the new gen just sprouted yesterday)
new gen in the back there, last 2 big pots in front ( 3 of the new gen just sprouted yesterday)
more big pots, I think my one bean plant is sick, not sure what's wrong.
more big pots, I think my one bean plant is sick, not sure what's wrong.
all the older plants are transplanted into big pots (The romaine with the long stem is the one I've been cutting from for Hunter's lunches)
all the older plants are transplanted into big pots (The romaine with the long stem is the one I've been cutting from for Hunter's lunches)
tomato plants have started little green tomatoes and are weaving through a pallet
tomato plants have started little green tomatoes and are weaving through a pallet

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rainbowgardener
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Location: TN/GA 7b

Hard for me to tell from the pictures much about the set up or lighting.

Mixed bag of stuff, some that like cold and some that like warm. Easiest picture for me to respond to is the very last one. Your tomato plant is very leggy - tall and spindly with a lot of space between branches. They do this when they are not getting enough light. Lighting for your plants needs to be directly on them from just 2-3 inches away and on for 16 hrs a day. And the pot the tomato plant is in is not nearly big enough. You want something like a 5 gallon bucket size (minimum!) for one tomato plant.

You have kind of jumped right in to the deep end of the pool - invested a lot of money and effort and set very ambitious goals, even though you are clearly new to gardening and don't yet know a lot about your plants and what they need. Just understand that, jumping in like that is a challenging way to do it and bound to lead to some trial and error, sinking and floundering a bit. There's a big learning curve. But if you stick with it and learn what you need to, it will eventually be very rewarding.



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