The Greenhouse - The Finale

Just as 2017 is coming to a close - more on that in another post - our greenhouse is ready to go.  In the last couple of weeks I managed to get all of the air gaps covered, filled and stuffed with the silver bubble-wrap and spray foam. Anywhere I could see daylight or feel cool air, I covered or sprayed it.

It's not pretty, but it works!

Once I was confident that it would hold heat, or more accurately keep out cold, moving outside air, we moved the flowers and plants in that we wanted to protect from freezing weather. The "R" value of the plastic isn't much, but throw in a heater or two and it'll stay above freezing. Once the air-tight integrity was addressed, we were still waiting on getting power to the barn and greenhouse.  In the meantime I ran 200' of extension cord from the house to the greenhouse just to run one 1250 watt heater. On our coldest night (so far) the temp got down to 28 and the greenhouse got down to 36. Not bad for a single heater in a 10' x 20' space (8'-10' ceiling). And as of last week once the weather warmed back up into the 60's - 70's...

We got power!!!

Our current set up

The midday temps on sunny days have been in the high 80's to low 90's (heaters off, obviously). Our flowers and tomato are loving it!

January tomatoes, anyone?

Blooms on the Spider Plant.

Our Satsuma Orange is putting out new growth. Looks like flowerbuds too!

A blooms loving the "summer" warmth

So that about wraps it up for the greenhouse. I still have a shelf to build along the windows, but for the sake of checking off a list item, this greenhouse is done as it will safely protect our plants in the winter and even allow us to grow citrus and tropicals. That was our goal.

Speaking of lists...we'll recap this past year's wish list in our next post (coming soon!)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!