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I wonder how what will grow, and how well, in a greenhouse during winter. The days are pretty short, does it have a big impact?
I know folks who use bottom-heat in their greenhouses. They can produce just about any 'organic' crop you want, ready to harvest, on any month that you specify.
Otherwise hoop-houses are great for producing salad greens all year-round.
I have so far finished building 8 greenhouses this summer, though we are using ours for livestock. We have tried a few different designs in construction. This year we have settled on which design we think is best for us. Currently our greater concern is for the health of our animals, rather than on producing crops. Which is why we have built these for the critters. They are tarped over now and provide shade. But when snow begins to fall, and we remove the tarps, they should help to keep our critters warm and cozy through the winter months. [at least so we hope]
Our apples are on the small size and somewhat blemished but I haven't see any worms. The trees need drastic work though, so , the deer and turkeys can have them.
We had trouble with spraying our apples this year because of all of the rain. Every time I sprayed them it rained the next day. It killed the bugs off pretty well but it was not on long enough to kill off fungi. We got blisters and some funky looking bumps on the ones that did not fall off the tree. Out of three good sized trees there is not a dozen edible apples between them. Normally we slice and freeze a pile of apples for pies all winter and I usually press about 10 gallons of cider.....not this year! We also got some weird brown worm a few weeks ago that I had never seen before. It did not have silk but bunched up on the ends of the branches and ate the leaves by night. I sprayed them out but they did a lot of damage. I'm thinking apple makes better smoker wood than they do fruit trees. So it's off to the orchard this weekend for us!
I wonder how what will grow, and how well, in a greenhouse during winter. The days are pretty short, does it have a big impact?
Beet greens
leeks
endive
spinach
kale
collards
arugula
tatsoi
mizuna
pac choi
claytonia
mache
lettuce – Waldman, Black Seeded Simpson and Winter Density are my favorites. Not all lettuces are winter hardy.
minutina
Swiss chard - choose a thn stemmed variety. The leaves usually die back and the plant becomes dormant. Growth starts again by late February.
Short days do have an impact. Growth stalls around mid December and doesn't pick up again until after Ground Hog's Day when the sun is high enough in the sky and the days are again long enough to break dormancy and support growth. If you get your transplants and seedlings in at the right time and plant enough you can harvest greens all winter.
When you harvest you take the larger leaves and leave the small. Small/young leaves have pliable cell walls. Older cells aren't as pliable and burst when frozen. Photos.
My greenhouses are in various stages of planting now. I'll finish up #4 in February when I start seeding for spring greens in early February.
It's not as simple as planting and leaving it. You need row covers to help hold moisture and a few degrees of warmth. Transpiration and evaporation still happen so you do need to water about once a week on a sunny day. Voles are the biggest pests I deal with. There are no slugs, flea beetles, cucumber beetles or insects. There are spiders.
Excellent information Maine Writer, just what I was looking for. We're going to have a greenhouse so it's nice to know that the really short days of winter won't kill everything off, and we can still enjoy fresh greens throughout the winter months.
Forest Beekeeper, what livestock are you keeping in your greenhouses? Or did you mean you are growing food for the animals in them? I had thought of keeping quail in our greenhouse since they don't take up a lot of space.
... Forest Beekeeper, what livestock are you keeping in your greenhouses? Or did you mean you are growing food for the animals in them? I had thought of keeping quail in our greenhouse since they don't take up a lot of space.
Do livestock have to be in green houses to survive?
No.
Not generally.
However this past winter we did have issues with some of our livestock. I did not like dealing with the ones that did die from cold.
For example we had a lot of chicken-cicles. A chicken up on it's roost freezes solid and later it's grip on the roost will slip and the frozen chicken will land head first with it's feet sticking up in the air. An amazing feat, I saw it repeated numerous times, each time with their feet up in the air and the body frozen solid.
In the past when we have had kids or lambs, we have felt it best to bring them inside or keep them under a heat-lamp. But if they come inside it has an effect on the smell of our home.
I really do not want to be running heat-lamps everywhere and paying that electric bill. So we felt that we needed shelters for our livestock that provide some amount of warmth.
For every who has livestock, in each different region of Maine it seems to be different. For us, this is what we have experienced. I do not wish to express upon you that what we are doing is always needed. After a few years of trail and error, this is simply what we are trying this winter to improve our operation.
If your Dh wants to have livestock, then he should go for it!
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