Growing plants in the Rockies Greenhouse gardening at 8500ft

As a way to cheaply keeps the plants roots from freezing and keep the soil warm, I came across an article on using a ropelight to warm the soil.

The rope light uses just 5 watts of power, is totally waterproof and is flexible. We leave it on 24/7, the soil temp in punnets for seedlings stays at 70 F, and we fed it thru some planter boxes to help keep he soil warm, so far it seems to work.

Have a look:

My idea is to insulate the inside walls of the green house and cover the whole green house with a clear solar pool blanket, the one like bubble wrap.

So stage one was the internal walls.

Initially I thought I would just do 2 ft up the sides, and the wall that wont get the direct sun through it in the winter…. the northern wall. But after seeing how thin the plastic is on this greenhouse and the heat loss it already had I decided to try and cover all side walls and leave the roof open.

Using simple construction 2 inch polystyrene insulation panels I lined the inside of the walls.

So far it seems to be working well. The outside temp can be 40F (5C) and the inside temp is around 60 F (15C). There is a heater in there but at the moment it hardly comes on, it is set at 60F. The inner side is pure white, so it seems to work in reflecting the light around quite well , and the plants dont seem to suffer at all.

While everyones outdoor gardens have now died from frost and cold weather the greenhouse still looks unchanged.

We have herbs still growing strong, and tomato plants, strawberry plants, bok choi, lettuce, a cauliflower, and bell peppers. There is also some winter zuchinni seeds that have sprouted.

2 weeks and a bit with little time off has meant not enough hours in the day to do the update to the site. Plus I was sick as a dog last week after getting food poisoning in a Shoneys Restaurant in Vicksburg Mississippi … avoid this restaurant at all costs if you are thru this little town!

So after having planted some seeds, the sudden and unexpected drop in temps seems to have killed them, so had to do some replanting. It was mainly the arctic king lettuce which didnt survive… either that or there is a bug eating them!

Well its the end of august, soon the leaves will turn and the snow will come!

We are still getting the odd strawberry, lots of herbs, peppers and tomatoes.

But there are no more lettuce plants for a while, which is a bummer. But soon we will have some more.

The Giant Tree Tomato plants are amazing, and giant, they are trying to put a hole in the roof. We also have tomatoes on them, they grow quick, real quick as you can see from the pics.

I am impressed, 1 week and we have seeds from the tomatoes , lettuce and cucumber. In less than one week, and ALL the seeds I planted seem to have come alive.

I am still waiting on the celery, but I am hoping they will come alive this week.