March Greenhouse Progress!

A lot has happened in the past few months.

The first use of the greenhouse by the science department: Mr. Barry requested a dozen bean plants for a lab he'll have in a few weeks. The greenhouse club has sown them into pots for him. This sort of procedure should work out very nicely!

It got cold in the greenhouse! This year, it didn't really get cold outside until January, but then we got some serious cold. When the temperature was in the single digits, we froze in the greenhouse: the giant tubes with the fish had large amounts of ice. That killed the water hyacinth in the tube. If the tube had frozen much more, expanding ice would probably have shattered it before it froze the goldfish solid. The few plants we'd left in the greenhouse did freeze, and the frost-tolerant vegetables we'd planted stopped growing.

This illustrates a design flaw: when you want to depend on solar heat, don't build at the bottom of a well. Because the greenhouse is at the bottom of a courtyard, for almost two months the sun didn't rise high enough to shine on the greenhouse. In the future, for those two months growth will essentially slow to a stop, even if we keep the greenhouse warm with a ventillation system. But we can live with that. Another design flaw is that the thermal storage (ie. water tanks) that supposedly would prevent freezing are not nearly large enough to do anything significant in such a large greenhouse.

It got hot in the greenhouse! Now that the sun has peeked above the top of the building to shine into the greenhouse, the temperature can readily hit 100 or more. We're seeing some peak-temperature wilting in seedlings. Opening the roof vents gets the temperature back down to sane levels, but we really need automated temperature control with thermally operated vents.

The current proposal for fixing the temperature problems in the greenhouse is to install two intake fans to move air from the hallway windows into the greenhouse, and louvered vents to allow cold air at the bottom of the greenhouse to escape. We will also need thermal-muscle powered automatic vents to pull cool air from the building into the greenhouse during the summer, even if the fans are not running. The fans also must be louvered so that if they shut off, the building doesn't draw air from the outside through the greenhouse into the school building. That would quickly chill the greenhouse in the winter.

February was time to start seedlings for this spring's crop, but because the greenhouse was too cold for good germination, I moved a mesh table into my classroom and covered it with plastic. It's raised so that it fits over the radiator in my south windows: that provides bottom heat and excellent light. We're getting great germination. The greenhouse club members have enthusiastically gotten into sowing seeds into community pots and directly into cell packs. It was great doing this in the classroom when it was chilly in the greenhouse. We're already transplanted our first seedlings, and almost finished the direct sowing. The flats of germinated seedlings have now been moved into the greenhouse.

Students, teachers, and administration have been very excited to see the Amaryllis blooming and seedlings growing on the plant table in my room. It's generating some excitement.

I've taken some of my math classes into the greenhouse as well. My discrete math class (all seniors) was feeling really lazy about the math, so I had them sow a bunch more flats in the greenhouse and bring them back into the classroom for germination under the well-controlled conditions. They really enjoyed it, and will be excited as their seedlings germinate in the next week or so. I've promised that class and the greenhouse club members that they can have a seedling each from what they've started. The rest we'll have fun selling, perhaps at 50 cents to 2 bucks a plant.

The front bed of the greenhouse has been planted with a few pansies and violas that I bought, along with some nasturtiums, morning glories, thunbergia, swiss chard, chives, and other plants that we grew. The lettuce we sowed in winter has decided that it's a good time to grow, and we've resown some moon vines, snap peas and sweet peas. Soon we'll plant in some other seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and other seedlings.) It's starting to look like the greenhouse is used!

Here's a list of what we've sown:

Anchusa petophylla ‘Blue Shower’
Basil ‘Genovese’
Basil ‘Lemon Mrs. Burns’
Bean ‘Pencil Pod’
California Poppy ‘Sunset Mix’
Chinese Chives
Cilantro/Coriander ‘Slow Bolting’
Cleome ‘Color Fountain Mix’
Cosmos ‘Bright Lights Mix’
Cosmos ‘Double Click’
Cosmos ‘Sonata Dwarf Mix’
Cynoglossum ‘Chill Out’
Dianthus ‘Arctic Fire’
Echinacea ‘Lustre Hybrids
Four O’Clock’s Mix
Gypsophila ‘Covent Garden’
Hollyhock ‘Antwerp Mix’
Impatiens ‘Neon Mixed’
Ipomoea alba
Ipomoea ‘Heavenly Blue’
Ipomoea pandurata
Lavateria trimestris ‘Twins Hot Pink’
Lettuce ‘All Year Round’
Linanthes ‘French Hybrids’
Linaria ‘Northern Lights’
Lobelia erinus ‘Blue Wings’
Marigold ‘Burpee’s Best Mix’
Marigold ‘Solan’
Marigold ‘Sunspot’
Marigold ‘Snowdrift’
Nemophila ‘Pennie Black’
Nasturtium ‘Alaska Mixed’
Nasturtium “Empress Of India’
Nicotiana ‘Fragrant Cloud’
Pepper ‘California Wonder’
Pepper ‘Thai Dragon’
Salvia ‘Hummingbird Mixed’
Salvia ‘Lady In Red’
Sensitive Plant
Silene lacinata ‘Jack Flash’
Snap Pea ‘Sugar Ann’
Snow Pea
Sweet Pea ‘T&M Prize Strain’
Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’
Thunbergia ‘Beauty Spots’
Tithonia ‘Torch’
Tomato ‘Beefmaster Hybrid’
Tomato ‘Sugary F1 Hybrid’
Tomato ‘Sweet 100 Hybrid’
Zinnia ‘Candy Cane Mix’
Zinnia ‘Cactus Flowered Mix’
Zinnia ‘Peppermint Stick’

Not all have germinated, but we've got a fair amount. We need to do some transplanting in the next few weeks, and I have a few more seeds coming:

Golden Berry (Cape Gooseberry
Cucumber 'Swing F1 Hybrid'
Sage
Alpine Strawberry 'Mignonette'
Echinops ruthenicus

I've put off sowing my own daylily seed for my hybridizing. Once the remaining seedlings are moved to the greenhouse, I'll sow them. See my web page for that project: http://hubendaylilies.blogspot.com/2006/12/welcome.html

Time to start taking some pictures!