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Greenhouse in Winter
biofreak
Posts: 1,089
in Fruit & veg
Having cleared out the toms and cucumbers I now have an empty greenhouse and am ready for all ideas to fill it full of edible goodies for the winter months. It is an unheated polytunnel, and I would prefer to grow things in containers as voles galore in the veg patch this year. Both cats useless!!
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Apparently the voles in the front garden are tastier than in the back, many heads found in middle of kitchen floor each morning! Cats need to have a sense of direction!
Just a footnote on original question - I do not want to grow lettuce. Can I grow Broad Beans/Peas?
Broad Beans doing really well in cold greenhouse. Grabbed myself some polystyrene fishboxes lying around the Market last week - Could I pop some things in these? Suggestions please - Temp hovering around 9 degrees. Always been afraid of sowing too early as seem to lose so many young plants though they sprout readily enough.
What is the minimum temperature in your polytunnel? At the moment my unheated potting shed gets to about 9 - 10 C by day if we have a little sun - but has been around or below freezing most nights this past 3 weeks.
You could probably try some peas and you've still got time for garlic.
Blimey, clearing out in October. My tomato plants are still producing in February on last year's growth. Wish I'd taken cuttings, though this year's growth has started. Don't leave ripe ones on, it'll take longer for the plants to go into dormancy and you might get winter toms.
One could grow winter greens mizuna etc.
You could install a passive heat collector (thermal mass) in your greenhouse to reduce the frost risk eg old storage heater bricks, a big black container of water.
Interesting Frank - whereabouts are you? What size is your greenhouse and how do you heat it?
Edited to add: Having read some of your other posts I see that you're up on the east coast of Scotland. Given some of the low temperatures we've had down here in East Anglia I presume that you have some sort of heat in your greenhouse?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Temperature 10-12c at the moment. Have popped in some lettuce plants (Bought 6 for 75p) so won't have lost much if I lose them. Parsley doing well. Sowed red onions Red Baron yesterday in between lettuces. Can you grow onion sets in containers indoors, or will it get too hot in the Spring?
Frank - I once tried that trick of large tubs of water in the greenhouse. They froze.
But then winters are colder here as a rule. Now I just bubble wrap the walls and roof and then use it to store pots of plants that can't stay out unprotected. This winter I have ubs and troughs of bulbs which they bl**dy rodents have been diving in to but I shall take them out this coming week and put them in the sunshine so I have space for my soon to be sown broad beans and sweet peas and, when it's a bit warmer, my soon to be sown toms and chillies.
I'm in the north of the United Kingdom (we don't use the S word round here), Aberdeen specifically. Being on the coast it's a little warmer than inland due to the thermal mass of the sea. Greenhouse is unheated (I don't even heat my house) and there are a few broken panes, though the path is sunken 300mm and reclaimed polyiso insulation from a refurb site and polystyrene leek trays from a nearby takeaway bin have been employed to retain the heat in the growing media. Tomatoes are short-lived perennials, although I was growing them as annuals general winter malaise and can't-be-botheredness prevented me from clearing the greenhouse earlier. The tomato plants also act as a screen between my nosy neighbour's garden and my window.
I keep collecting bubble wrap when I see it in a skip but it's not a particularly good as thermal insulation.
It surprises me how plants I could have written off are in fact clinging onto life. Given the temperatures and frost they should all be dead. Though they look it, the plants are clearly still transporting nutrients to set seed. This evening I harvested all the toms one one side to make way for seedling trays. I think the variety that is still producing is (Super?) Marmande, though the labels are long gone.