I picked up this little Ruby Red tree/ bush in April of this year. It now has three fruit and growing strong into winter. We’ll see how it looks in the spring.
Aug 7
Nov 17
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Looks great.
I see the green house is serving you well 
Thanks Calron! I’m trying to really push the limits. The greenhouse very much imitates central/northern California winter temps… I also have a ponderosa lemon in the ground doing well with one small lemon. It’s flowering right now and setting more fruit. The Bacon avocado it’s starting to put out another flush.
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That’s awesome. Looks like you’re doing a great job from a NorCal 9B growers perspective. You have several of my trees in your plans/growing. I just planted a Hass inground this past fall. It’s a bit of a crap shoot for me as well, since they are technically 10A.
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I’m planning to add a add on lean to glass greenhouse to the south side of my house next spring. I’m hoping i can grow some dwarf tropical citrus for myself next winter as well. Matt do you heat your greenhouse all winter? is keeping snow off a big job? there are grants out there for permanent greenhouses but i think the cost to heat it and keep snow off is just too much to justify getting one here.
Do you get Ice storms alot? Here most 4’ spaced gotchic arches (under 20’ wide needs to be steep) will not build up snow. Heating them is probably crazy unless you live somewhere with alot of solar potential but attached to your house (and south facing) you would extend your season and be able to keep it above freezing and no deep freezes with no supplemental heating a very long time.
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we get a lot of snow but very rarely get ice. i plan to keep the door open to the house to help heat it. on sunny days it would help heat the house even on the coldest days.
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Yeah i think well designed a 800 ft greenhouse built onto the side of my house covering three of my windows and taking up a good amount of my exterior loss would save me around $120 month in heating 3 months a year and a good 40-60 dollars for the other 3 months. However I would need to have larger deciduous trees for the summer or my plan is to put in a motorized shade cloth on a timer above it so it does not make things worse in the summer. I actually think the solar gain would be more than that but it is hard to tell.
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i read a blog of a couple in n. vermont that claimed theirs reduced their winter heating costs by 75%! of course that is weather dependent but i can definitlly see how well it could work as a alternate heat source. you’re right though. you would definitely need some thing to control the heat in there in the summer. shade cloth and some fans and vents to suck out the hot air. i would also have a door on each end that could be opened to air it out.
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I know a guy here that no longer uses his heater just from solarizing his house but he is a engineer. What i would love to do is a bunch of the Geothermal design with passive heating and cooling but i think you need to incorporate that before you build.
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it would definitely work at your location as you guys get a lot more sun and a lot less snow than we do here. if i lived where your at id have a greenhouse and gone solar a long time ago.
Yup between 310 days of sun a year and 30% more UV intensity you can always feel the sun. Also a regular occurrence that after a day of staying under freezing you will get up to 60-70 the next day. The hard part for greenhouses is you need your evap cooler longer than its safe to keep the water hooked up overnight.
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Yes it is heated over winter. The heat starts to go off around end of March. It kicks on on cold nights. No the snow melts so there is rarely any build up.
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So one fell off the plant. The other two are still on but started to yellow about a month ago. What’s going on? Here they are today Feb 3.
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Looks like it did not like the cold weather.
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The yellowing happened over some time. My only guess is, due to the container size, maybe that’s going to be the mature size of the fruit…?
Did you loose a bunch of leaves as well? The meyer lemon I keep inside over the winter often looses a lot of leaves for various reasons (dryness, bugs, etc.) and that always means the lemons turn out smaller. Hopefully even though it is smaller than you like it is ripening.
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I lost leaves taking it in the house for two days. it came right back out as soon as it warmed up again.