It’s going to be the coldest night of the year. Against our better judgment we let fencing contractors try to finish their install in this weather (we had a warm break recently) and they managed to tweak a gas line because they didn’t orient things the way it was flagged.
All of that aside, it was the gas line that goes to my greenhouse. It couldn’t be a worse day. Luckily it was sunny so the greenhouse held heat until I was able to unbox the industrial backup heater I had and put in two other garage space heaters. When we wired the greenhouse we made sure to add a 240V outlet to accommodate this 5600W heater.
If we didn’t have these supplies, everything would be toast as we get into the single digits tonight. It also reminded me to get a thermostat set up for this beast so it will automatically click on if temps start to drop below 55 degrees. A big four seasons greenhouse is totally useless in a cold climate without backup systems in place.
I lied when I said it was the coldest night of the year, because we just exited one of the coldest two week periods in our area’s history. Lots of below zero temps and a record breaking set of days below 20. The greenhouse performed great with just radiant floor heat. Insulating the slab deeply to create a huge heat sink was definitely the right move.
I have a few different chicken coops and decided that two of them were not adequate for -25 degree wind chills, so some chickens are now living it up inside the greenhouse (in multiple large pens so they can’t get to my plants). I hate it! They’re messy and I don’t appreciate the chicken dust now coating a lot of plants. I’m glad I brought them in, though. Next year they’ll be in a different coop.
Hopefully it will warm up this next week and they can go back out.
My greens are growing well, my figs are setting breba crops, and some of my citrus is trying to bloom. I’m really looking forward to starting some other things. I feel like I’m under a time crunch because we’re having our first in a few months and my ability to repot all that I need to repot is rapidly diminishing day by day.