greenhouse So I built a coldframe/greenhouse

shaggs2riches

shaggs2riches

 Our fall has set in over the past couple weeks, up here in the Canadian Prairies. We are seeing the typical cool-cold nights and warm afternoons that come with the changing of the seasons. I have quite a few pods still waiting to ripen and a few plants that just started to produce pods. I want to get as much of the season as I can before I dig up plants and bring them inside to finish off. I decided to build a cover over my pepper garden. Over the winter I will have the garden uncovered to till in compost. I will put it back up to get an early jump on the season next year.
 
  So far it seems to do the trick. It even held up well to 60km/h winds that we had the other day! We have had a few mornings where frost has been on the windshield, but it has stayed warmer inside the cover. I do want to figure out the ventilation and maybe heating for the spring, but I will work on that over the winter. So far, I am very pleased with the outcome. The entire thing is built to come apart in no time. Right now I am using 6mm poly vapour barrier, but I want to upgrade to greenhouse grade for a more durable solution. Each day after work, I open it up for a couple hours and my plants seem to be doing really well under it. If it works well enough, I might leave it on for most of next season to keep the plants in a hotter, more humid environment, than my natural climate can offer.
 
 

 
 

 
 
Thank You. I keep getting lots of ideas how to improve it for next year. I'm totally hooked on this gardening thing. I'm probably going to build the same thing for our other garden, so we get everything off to a good start next year.
 
Super job ! I am in the middle of building a 12×16 walk in greenhouse right now. If I can ever figure out how to post the pics I have a few as it takes shape I will try to post. Love the raised beds .
 
Are you looking at powered or non-powered ventilation? As far as upgrading the cover material, you might want to look into polycarbonate pannels or rolls. The single layer plastic covers have around .5-1 r-value. The polycarbonate panels run around 1.7-2.5 and about half the heat loss factor.
 
Schdez said:
Are you looking at powered or non-powered ventilation? As far as upgrading the cover material, you might want to look into polycarbonate pannels or rolls. The single layer plastic covers have around .5-1 r-value. The polycarbonate panels run around 1.7-2.5 and about half the heat loss factor.
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I was looking at trying to ventilate with a combination of the two ventilation methods. One thing I noticed without any fans is when condensation falls onto the plants, the water droplets stay on the leaves. I can see quite a few leaves that have brown spots, that I can only assume is part from water falling onto the plants from the plastic above. I had thought about putting a ventilation fan on one end to suck out hot air and an open vent on the other end to bring in the fresh air. I was going to put the fan on either a timer or thermostat. The vent on the other end I was going to use one of those wax filled dampers. I like the polycarbonate idea. One thing that I was going to try with the greenhouse film was use two layers one on either side of my pipe frame, or double the plastic and have a fan to inflate between the two layers somehow. I had seen the second method in a video somewhere and it looks real slick and relatively easy to achieve. For additional heating, I was thinking of running a couple 3 inch black abs pipes filled with sand down along where my planks are. I don't know how effective that would be though.
 
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