Comments

Episode-82- Winter is for Gardening Part Two — 4 Comments

  1. If you live in the south and want to keep your greenhouse warm during those few below freezing days do this.

    Get yourself 1, 2, or 3 (depending on the size of your greenhouse) 55 gallon metal drums. Fill them with water and paint them black. Place them in your greenhouse so that during the day the sun shines directly on them.

    Water loses heat much slower than air. So at night they radiate heat into your greenhouse all night long. And they store the heat during the day.

    Now this fails if you have a day with significant cloud cover. But its vastly cheaper than a heater for the bulk of winter days/nights.

  2. Enjoyed todays pod cast on winter gardening an all.. it was an is an good Idea to do as todays times are definetly unstable, an we know not what the future may hold for us in that regard… Gardening is one of my favorite things I enjoy doing, thanks as you now got me thinking of building an greenhouse to putter around in an get plants growning for this next spring ahead of time….. by the way I am enjoying your podcasts greatly… ewver do one on foraging for food through fishing, hunting and wild plants an such?

  3. Last weekend I double dug my 2 main raised beds. Next beds I build will be a max of 3-4 feet as you found. It’s hard to streeeeeetch to the middle…

  4. Listening to this podcast now. The whole winter-gardening theme is great. However, quick correction: I just heard Jack mention that larger greenhouses are harder to keep above freezing overnight in the winter. It’s actually just the opposite; larger greenhouses hold their heat better. The volume of warm air within the greenhouse increases faster than the surface area of the greenhouse walls, as the house dimensions increase. Now, keeping them warm with supplemental heat, that is harder, but they will hold the heat longer and better overnight.