Growing plants in the Rockies Greenhouse gardening at 8500ft

Yes its January, its cold (32F daytime and 10F at night) and the little greenhouse that could is still hard at work. We still have an aphid problem, and insecticide just isnt doing anything, so we have gone natural and this week ordered 1500 ladybugs from California. Honestly I thought we would have rid the greenhouse of aphids when the soil was all removed… but no they are still there, and worse than when it was a soil based garden.

At the moment we have changed both hydroponic systems to Age Old Organics Liquid Soil Part A and Part B mix. Its cheap and seems to be making the plants grow extremely well.

We have had the coldest week since havng the greenhouse up, with temps dropping to around-5 F / -25 C the greenhouse heater has been able to just keep the inside temp at 55F at night, with daytime temps in the 60-70F range. So not hugely hot, but when you go in there from outside you definitely feel like you are in summer.

With some modifications to the left side ebb and flo system as the roots grew the flow slowed in the upper pipes, so had to change the pipe angle to let more water out of the top pipes, which of course meant a couple of days of drips as I tried to plug them with silicon.  The right side drip system has leak still in one of the buckets in the outlet pipe, still cant get it to seal… one day but its not a big leak.

The tomatoes are growing like mad, and we have already been able to get some nice sized peppers from the plants, and many strawberries… although they get eaten normally before they get to the back door of the house!

The only real problem at the moment is the seedlings, we are having a hard time getting them to grow, so this week I tried to plant some in soil with the intention of washing off the soil once they have grown to transplant size…we will see if it succeeds.