Greenhouse Growing in 2014

Dave and I spend a LOT of time in our chairs, sitting and gazing at the green wonderland he created for us. He happily putters about his plants daily. Building this  indoor growing space has benefitted us in so many ways. The motivation behind this project was getting more space for his tomatoes and peppers and giving them a longer growing season. He accomplished both of those things. Plus I can grow herbs! Rosemary, Lemon Thyme and basil love this warm friendly growing space. cucumbers thrive in here as well.

The plants have warmth and ventilation. The temperature climbs into the 80 degree F. Range, at the floor, when it’s very hot in summer. Mostly though, the temperature on the ground is a comfortable mid seventies. We have a LOT of passive ventilation designed into the west and east walls. so the hot air naturally chimneys up from the cooler east wall ground level vents to escape out the high west vents; taking most of the superheated air with it. That makes the lower levels where we work very comfortable indeed! More about the greenhouse design in this post.

We have discovered a few problems with growing the greenhouse way though. In two words, Pests and Molds! Aphids moved in almost instantly on the backs of a colony of ants and installed themselves cozily into our peppers. Our aphid wars and remedies are discussed in this post about aphids in our greenhouse. We use organic methods, so the battle is long, protracted and perpetual! But our peppers are outstanding!

The tomatoes are visited by an infinite variety of molds, wilt and other funguses. Dave plants resistant varieties. He says you can tell WHAT they are resistant to by looking at what is attacking them. They are not getting the same diseases. They resist certain ones and get the others! We have TONS of ventilation, Three fans going all the time and our open North wall door. Molds still come!  Incredibly though, the tomatoes are absolutely gorgeous!

 We installed this high horizontal trellis to make use of the high ceiling space and give us something to grow and hang things from. The cucumbers did pretty well up there. We had to use tall ladders for harvest though and watering. Kind of awkward, but the cucumbers were stellar!