I built a small greenhouse at work and the first year grew mostly vegetables.Some did really well,like Squash,Tomatoes,Eggplant and a few others.Then,after the harvest,and doing some digging,roots were discovered coming from two fair sized Maple trees nearby,infiltrating the soil in there.Instead of trying to continually fight these,a decision was made to put some trees in pots and let them grow there.
I’ve been inspired by fruitnut’s operation,like a lot of people and wanted to try to get some stone fruit that normally aren’t grown here,for lack of heat,things like Pluots.
The trouble with mine is,there is no electricity.That means no fans,only the wind for cooling.That may be the biggest drawback and challenge,because a balance between the needed heat and too hot,especially when plants are in containers is very critical.I’m not at the location every day and really can’t count on anyone else to take care of things,so sometimes the plants suffer.
I’m toying with the idea of 12 volt fans powered by deep cycle batteries and solar,but even though it’s in a fairly remote location,there are possibilities for vandalism and theft,during non business hours. Brady
Well, I guess you can have vandalism anywhere - even in your own backyard. One of those remote security cameras would be cool.
I built a solar system and one of its applications is for the hoop house in the winter (not actually a green house). I have 2-100W panels charging 4-6V deep cycle batteries wired to 12V and run a fan into which I wired in a temp controller. I believe I set them to come on at 75 deg. Although the fan is helpful, I feel the apex vents are critical. But those can be automatic too so you don’t have to worry about extreme heat build up in the winter. Not sure I would buy enough fans to keep it from heating up in the summer, but I just slide the poly off in April and back on in November.
Mine is a hoop house also.It does have two automatic vents on the North upper side that open around 75-80F,but a lot of times,that isn’t enough on a sunny day.The poly is stretched over some PVC hoops and secured on each side with Wiggle Wire.There is a door on one end and the other has two flaps of poly that can be spread open.Recently,on a day I wasn’t there,a worker later told me the temperature reached 114F on a remote thermometer before they noticed.
I’m not sure if a camera is an effective deterrent there.Even if video is captured,what can be done with that?They might even take the camera. Brady
We built my hoop house with sides that roll up to about 4 to 5 feet off the ground. This feature and the open door keep the place cool.