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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Cold Frames vs Greenhouse

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  • From: "SHEILA PAYNE" <srp75 AT msn.com>
  • To: <lists AT rhomestead.com>, "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Cold Frames vs Greenhouse
  • Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:16:59 -0700

I do basically the same thing. Germinate in the basement with lights and heat mats.  Then when transplanted into pots, transfer to the cold frame.  Flats are out on tables during the day, at night they are under the tables and the tables are covered with a couple layers of poly (the old beat up stuff that I saved).  I put a heat source under the tables.  It's still plenty cold at night in Colorado in the spring so I have to insulate well -- thus the tables and layers of plastic. Beth's tent system sounds intriguing though. A neat trick for a heat source is strings of C8 and C9 Christmas lights as the heat source.  They give off quite a bit of heat and the heat is distributed along the string of lights. Not sure they would work where the volume of the space they are heating is very large -- mine tends to be not too high or wide as I'm under the tables.  
 
Sheila
Far Out Gardens
Boulder County Colorado
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Cold Frames vs Greenhouse

How do most people germinate flats such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplants
when temperatures are cool in unheated tunnels?

Messy, but in the basement under grow lights, with heat mats.

Then, we build a plastic tent, suspended from the perlins, in the hoophouse
and put a portable heater in that. We do have an oil furnace (air) now and
build that into the tent.

The "tent" is a large sheet of  plastic, with fist-size rocks (could be
tennis balls, etc) placed under the plastic at the purlins, and fence wire
wrapped around the plastic and rock, with a hook bent to hang from the
purlin. Hard to describe, but simple and works. We can raise two sides to
the unheated part of the hoophouse for cooling if needed.


Beth Spaugh
Rehoboth Homestead
Peru NY
http://rhomestead.com

~Without power over our food, any notion of democracy is empty.  Francis
Moore Lappe



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