Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

That cold breeze is picking up and I don't feel like going back out, so it's 
back to the keyboard again and some warm soup. That hotbox of Harvey's really 
works. Covering over a frame, inside the greenhouse keeps the cold out 
(Harvey's been at this a lot longer than yours truly). Eliot Coleman 
explained the idea of layering, like we put on extra clothing in winter. He 
uses row covers inside a greenhouse. The greens don't keep growing in the 
dead of winter, but he gets them to sale size before the cold and the row 
cover protects them to sell Dec & Jan without frost damage.

To get an even earlier start on tomatoes and sweet peppers I built a couple 
airtight plastic on wood frame hotboxes in the sunroom, with a small 
thermostat heater in them and a door that opens in front. Those seeds need at 
least 70 degrees to germinate well. As they grow they get moved to gallon 
pots, then transplanted in greenhouse beds with a post hole digger that makes 
a perfect size hole for them, then cardboard boxes over them at night in May. 
Now that the outside cats have mysteriously multiplied and taken over the 
sunroom I'm not sure what I'll do this spring.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/18/2010 at 12:15 PM Harvey Ussery wrote:

>Debbie Mcdonald wrote:
>> Have any of you a solar greehouse? I have a bunch of barrels and I
>remembered reading about lining the bottom of a greenhouse with them full
>of water to heat it some but? I am having trouble imagining it:)
>
>
>My Greenhouse section begins at
>http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Greenhouse.html
>
>I've experimented with the water-thermal-mass concept. Not sure it's
>ever paid off that much in terms of keeping the temp up--but then, it
>would be next to impossible to prove that one, one way or the other, in
>a single home greenhouse.
>
>At the moment I'm trying to keep top growth on a fig tree alive by
>surrounding it with 5-gal buckets of water and blankets over the top.
>(One year I had a 55-gal drum of water beside the fig--top growth leafed
>out in the spring--next winter I did not, top growth died, plant had to
>re-establish from the roots, big delay in fruiting.)
>
>Another water-thermal application is making my "hot box" for starting
>warm season transplants. See
>http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Greenhouse+Hotbox.html
>
>If you invest in a greenhouse, you will never regret it.
>
>~Harvey
>
>--
>Harvey in northern Virginia
>www.themodernhomestead.us
>