Extending the season, my version
 

There's a couple current threads on this and I tried to find the relevant thread to post this to but failed to find it. Since it's pic heavy, I figured it may as well have its own topic to live under and we can crosslink to it later if that's helpful.

In 2003-2005 I played around with both starting very early and bringing plants indoors to overwinter. I'm trying it again this year using what I hoped I've learned since then.

The pics tell most of the story and I'll add in captions as needed. I made a simple seed starting systen using cheap shop lights, masonite for shelves and 1x2 glued and air-nailed for the wood.

We started in late February or early March. By May, it was past time to get them outside, but the gh wasn't quite ready. The following year, I got things out there in April, using various tents, covers and xmas lights for heat with small computer fans to move the air.

As others on here have found, this "gh in a gh" system is easily good for outdoor temps down to 20F or lower using only the Christmas lights. I could always kick on additional heat in the main part of the gh if needed, but I was always tring to keep additional heat to a minimum.

I didn't use any heat-absorbing mass, but there is a mountain's worth of natural slate right beneath us and I laid down a walking path of slate, bedded in sand.

The early start gave me the best results I've had in my garden before or since. It was a lot of extra work tending plants a couple months earlier than normal and all the covering/uncovering and monitoring it required. It was cool watching the baby plants grow all snug in their covers and pretty lights.

Despite it all, we still had many green, unripened toms we brought indoors before a hard frost hit in the fall. But it was a great harvest for us all season. The beans and peas really produced for us and we even grew a pumpkin and some squash in there. The June pics show well-developed plants while most people here barely had their seedlings in the ground. In my best year I had ripe fruits on the 4th of July, not too shabby for Zone 4.

The last 2 pics in this post are of a cherry tomato with green fruit. This was a plant we overwintered from the year before. It was an absolute monster in season two and made tons of fruit.

That should give the background, so on to the pics!
-Ed

duplicate - blew the attachments!
-Ed

More pics taken as the season progressed through July and August. There's a Hungarian pepper in one of these pics that I overwintered, detailed in another thread.
-Ed

wow you got a lot of plants into that greenhouse, holy smokes. Looks like it's actually bigger than my current garden! Did you keep everything in there all summer? You sure got a lot of tomatoes.

I do love a jungle! Probably a little too crowded but they were still healthy and growing like gangbusters. If I did get a diseased plant or invading branch, I'd yank it and you'd never even notice.

Getting a month or two earlier start under the tents and lights is what really helped produce that packed full gh later on. Anyone could adapt those techniques to extending the season in both spring and fall. I start plants indoors, then grow my toms in the gh all season. There's just too many hungry critters and weather events that tend to take out any tomato I plant outdoors. I put a few in pots on our decks and they do okay, but you can count on high winds, frost, hail or insects and deer to reduce anything in the yard to sticks. Matter of fact, I started indoors so early, I had to get the gh going any way I could just to have a place to put all those plants, LOL. So that's how it began and I came up with the tent and Christmas lights as a cheaper way to keep them warm in the gh.

I watched my wife battle it out with her flowers versus nature, and decided long ago a gh was the only way to go for me and my veggies!

I had a good harvest in the years pictured, those stacks of toms were the final pick before a hard frost. It takes too much electric heat to keep the gh going much past the end of September. I haven't tried my tent ideas in the fall yet, as the plants are usually starting to slow down by then and it isn't worth nursing them any longer.

But you could take cuttings and grow them on in a smaller space under a tent with lights. There's too much risk of an extended power failure here to invest a lot of effort or heating cost to potentially lose it all in just a couple hours on the wrong cold night, so I do my overwintering indoors where we at least have wood heat and window light.

-Ed

We've already enjoyed our first frost a few weeks ago, so I made a few cuttings then and potted up a couple plants to get them ready to come indoors. Our weather log says we're due for an extended cold snap and first snow is typically next week sometime. Currently, we're a bit warmer right now than in years past, with lows of 35 or higher instead of 28-32 as in other years. Highs of 75 are predicted a couple days from now. But, winter is coming soon, ready or not!

Here's a pic of the chosen few who get to live in comfy wood heat and tender care for the duration. We have my dwarf Johnny Jumpup tomato that I've chosen to save seeds to donate back to the USDA, so it's important to get as much fruit from it as I can. Right behind it is Stupice, easy to spot with its potato leaf growth. It has one fruit turning now and more to come. It's already used to this window spot and doing well, but needs a bigger pot.

I have freshly-rooted cuttings from USDA Stone and USDA "unknown," I just hope to finally try these guys out. On the right of the pic is one of my Sungold F4s getting established as a cutting. It was pretty good in the gh, so I have hopes for it as my own version of Sungold OP.

Last in for this winter's experiment is my USDA asparagus seed from Germany. Their fern-like growth adds a little variety and I'm curious how they'll do indoors. A couple unidentified tomato seeds found their way into the asparagus pot (looks like a Sungold plant), so they all got to come indoors for the ride.

Right now they fit on a small table in the living room and that buys me some time while I make a space for them. It won't be long before they'll need bigger pots and additional light.

-Ed

hoop house
 

Thinking about trying this myself next year. I have several gardens for veggies, the closest to the house is the narrowest, 15 by 60 feet. Looked at home depot for pvc pipe prices and think I can make a frame for less than a hundered bucks, using cheap thin, throw away plastic drop cloths. Frame would be reusable. Just looking to get a one month jump. Here in SE mich, with amended clay, I didn't set out plants til the second week of june this year. Had a great season but some of the late varieties ended with many green tomatoes still on the vine. Hope to start most of the lates under the plastic, and a few earlys, then plant the other gardens later and strtech my season of edibles. Nice pics and great idea.

That is really neat Ed, and I took the idea of using Christmas lights in a tiny rolling 4 rack "greenhouse" that I have on my porch with some seedlings. Never thought of using them to keep things warm, but hey, why not? I just happened to have some laying around too! thanks!

Glad I inspired some experimentation! It does take a bit of extra effort for the tent in a gh method, but it adds maybe another 10 degrees or so of frost protection below what my gh with simple electric heat and a prayer can handle.

I can't take the credit for coming up it. "Way back" in 2001 or so, people over at GW were playing with the various methods and I was trying things out as well. For me, it was the combo of the GH, tents and lights that made it more doable. I'm sure something similar has been practiced for centuries. One wintry day for me, the light "came on" and the ideas do work at a pretty low cost.

The GH was for wind and weather resistance, power and ready access without having to mess with snow-covered outdoor covers. With one electric heater I could keep the gh above freezing till outside temps hit about 17 to 20. Inside the tents with the lights and a computer fan at one end, I was good to just a few degrees above zero outside. Below zero, things got pretty dicey!

But I did baby those suckers! I had several remote thermometers and kept close watch. I monitored weather predictions not just for my location, but other nearby spots that traditionally saw colder temps than we did. If temps looked too nippy out that night, I'd go into daddy-protect mode and nurse my babies through. As you can see from the pics, they were mostly far from tender seedlings, so maybe not so prone to damage as true seedlings might be.

OTOH, I've seen seeds or seedlings planted directly into these harsher early spring conditions end up being better acclimated to them and not shocked as much as larger transplants suddenly thrust out into the gh tents. So the best answer is to experiment and find out what works for you.

Being a bit of an electronics nut, I made most of my own temperature controls. A friend gave me a commercial restroom hand-dryer. It was 240-volt, but worked fine at 120 wall-socket voltage and the fan still moved a ton of air, but the heat was not so intense. I added a 60-watt light bulb that came on whenever the heater did, so I could easily monitor from the house when the heater was on. I could also fire up a box fan or anything else along with it, and have something else run only when the main heater was off, so I had a pretty good handle on things. The same system handles my fans in the summer.

For cheap plastic outer covers, I had much better luck with the thicker stuff. Those 99-cent "drop cloths" tear at the slightest hint of stress or any sharp-ish point they lay against. Add a surprise wet snowload or some wintry gusts and a too-cheap cover might fail at the worst time.

It cost me $25 to cover my 11'x13' gh with two sheets/packages of the thicker stuff. I think they were 6-mil, but if they cost around $10-15 each, that's about the right grade to provide a minimum of useful service. Contractor's plastic sheeting, like Vis-Queen in those 100' x 25' rolls are great and I could cover my gh twice with one of those with some left over. I usually had to replace my springtime cover sometime during the summer and I removed it all in the fall, leaving my gh as a bare wood frame. Constant sun and weather made them fail in a few months. There's more expensiv grades available that can handle several seasons, so choose what works for you, but I'd avoid the wimpy 1.5-mil and under grades. If you do use the thin stuff, double them if you can and make sure they don't flop around too much in breezes.

I soon went from Vis-Queen to a corrugated twin-layer plastic sheeting for the gh in 2003. Turns out the sheeting was too opaque and has gotten worse, this has cost me good plant growth, but I did love leaving the same cover on year-round for over 8 years. We're replacing the roof next spring for something more transparent, but expect to also see more summertime cooling problems as a result. Oh, well, always a compromise!

The Christmas lights are great, as you can wind them around, concentrate 'em where you want more, or suspend them on wires above. I probably had better luck using the larger outdoor "nitelite" bulbs, but also had more breakage that left exposed filaments when bulbs failed as they aged. The bulbs didn't get so hot that a stray water droplet falling off a cover would cause them to break, but it is something to keep in mind and be sure to unplug when watering/tending, etc. My gh is on a GFI circuit, probably a must for using Christmas lights in this "non-UL-approved" application!

I'd normally only use the Christmas lights on the coldest nights, but if kept elevated and dry, I'd think they could be used more freely.

Myself, I understand electricity and had no problems, but I was always vigilant, kept a very close eye on things and tried to automate and centralized my controls so I could easily reach them quickly and safely from outside of the tents.

Sorry, didn't mean for this to be so long. I do go on a bit sometimes with the details!

-Ed

Ed
 

Ed, thankyou for all the details, it doesn't leave one guessing. I didn't
think the flimsiest drop cloth would work, but had no idea so I'll go with 6 ml to start. My goal is to just get a one moth or so jump on plant out. This yr the second week of june. Often it is too cool AND to wet and a house will help with both. Also it may help on all the deformed early beefsteaks.

I love it, Ed, and appreciate all the extra details! I feel like I've been trying to reinvent the wheel to fit in my budget. Every hint works.
I really love the idea of the rope lights used under the seedling trays set into roasting pans or cookie sheets. I used to be an events organizer, so I have lots of lights!
jane

Thanks Jane, glad it helped! I like your enthusiasm, trying new ideas helps keep it interesting. With our short season, my plants usually need all the help they can get!

I'm overwintering two toms in a southwest window indoors. One is an unknown, a volunteer that came up in a pot of asparagus, of all things, and it even has a baby tom growing. The other is one of my rare-to-sprout original seeds of the Johnny Jumpup miniature tomato.

My greenhouse needs a new roof, so unless I manage to tackle that project before spring, I can't be trying any early-season projects this year.

The year I took those pics was my best year ever. Not ure if it was pure luck, cooperative weather or what, but having toms to set out that were mature enough to have small fruits put on sure didn't hurt!

-Ed

[QUOTE=vegomatic;234276] A friend gave me a commercial restroom hand-dryer. It was 240-volt, but worked fine at 120 wall-socket voltage and the fan still moved a ton of air, but the heat was not so intense. . . My gh is on a GFI circuit, probably a must for using Christmas lights in this "non-UL-approved" application!. . . [/QUOTE]

Something I have used for the same purpose, sort of, on a smaller scale, is an air-pop style popcorn popper, without the plastic topper, to add some warm air flow without exposed heating elements.

As with your other methods, it requires care in positioning and supervision in operation for safety -- but I have found it helpful now and then, as a temporary way to add a enough circulating heat to a semi-enclosed area to take the edge off extreme temps.

I am pretty cowardly about using any sort of heat source inside a plastic tent -- but there is probably more wind and more fire risk here than where you are . . . or perhaps I am just more timid. ;]

I certainly agree that an artificially sheltered early start for garden plants can be the key to a good yield in our part of the country. I have tried to come up with a way to use outdoor rated Christmas lights in the garden, after any tents were removed, to add a little heat and to distress voles and other varmints, but I have not been able to come up with anything that seemed to me safe for our garden areas here. There probably is a way, I just have not been able to think of it . . . yet.

Thanks, I appreciate the additional cautions. In my last reply, I thought about reiterating my earlier comment about GFI, and volts and such, so it's good to have you chime in.

I have to admit that at age six I would drag a chair into a closet so I could stand on it and stare at the exposed chassis of a large B&W TV my dad had mounted into the living room wall. He left off the cabinet, so it was a glowing target my young self could not resist.

I've had my share of shocks, but I do try to play it safer these days - maybe! (Don't ask my wife about that one!)

Reality check on the larger Christmas lights - I did have some bulbs that popped the glass off when they failed. Suspended by wires, the exposed bulbs couldn't make contact with anything, but the risk is there. We have no children, nor do any of our friends (all grown), so I don't have to maintain the system to anything greater than what I myself feel comfortable with. Regardless, I do prefer that I am able to live to enjoy the havest! That is the reason why I had the plug-in located outside of the tent itself. I kept the lights plugged into a fused power bar, that was itself powered by a fused 6-way, and that went to a GFI outlet.

For safer AC use, there are things called "isolation transformers" that provide AC current on a limited wattage basis that is totally removed from the household electrical supply. More typically used in servicing antique radios and electronics, it uses transformer windings that electrically separate the supply voltage from the wires going to your Christmas lights, for example.

Another thought would be to go to a low-voltage system. Convert household AC to DC using something like an automotive battery charger and power a string of 12-volt automotive bulbs. While a 12-volt car battery could be pressed into service to power lights in a similar fashion, keep in mind the high-current an automotive battery can supply. Believe it or not, people have been electrocuted on 12 volt car batteries! It's not the voltage, but the current that actually gets you.

That's why any home-based 12-volt system should also provide some sort of protection and/or current limiting.

All that being said, for many years now people have been using the same lights as I show indoors and out, and the same safety precautions apply for either use. It's just that in a GH situation, you are more likely to come into close contact with the lights that it's only common sense to pay close attention to the risks.

So far as bulb heat against plastic is concerned, I can feel the warmth of a bulb with my bare hand and tell if it's too hot. The typical miniature or 4-7-watt outdoor C-type does not normally make enough heat to be a problem. Just the same, I made sure no bulb came into contact with any covering I applied.

Thanks much for the added emphasis! A gardener needs to be above the soil-line to enjoy the harvest! I don't personally believe much in nanny-state over-protection, but I don't want anyone to take my suggestions carelessly and endanger themselves or others.

-Ed

Ed I have no idea about electricity and fear of fires keeps me from trying what you've done. However, wondering. Is it the c-7 or c-9 bulbs you used? Those tiny lights dont' seem like they'd give off enough heat.

I have no room for a greenhouse and too many trees, but I'm thinking when I rebuild my garage (detached from house) I just may have to insulate the thing and have a wall of windows built in on the south side for early starts of plants :).