I have a semi-finished room in my shed that I normally just turn a small space heater on in the winter and it keeps it between 60-65 degrees. I don’t grow anything that requires it to stay that warm during the winter. I’m thinking of overwintering some blackberries that are in 1 gallon pots in there and I don’t need it to stay that warm. I was talking with my father-in-law who said he uses one of these for the block heater on his tractor. It turns on at 35* and shuts off at 45*. So I’m wondering if something like this with the little space heater plugged in to it would work to keep it just above freezing in the room? Or anyone have some other suggestions that would also work?
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What variety of blackberries can’t freeze?
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I’ve let blackberries freeze in their plastic pots outside in negative temps. If you’re in 7a I wouldn’t bother to overwinter them with any sort of supplemental heat. Edited to add: with the caveat that maybe there are varieties more sensitive? But keeping it above 35 seems like overkill.
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I’m going to point out the problems with this because it will come up more times. It depends on how many kWh of power is needed to maintain temperature. If the TC3 has enough, then it would work. If it does not, it will surely fail.
My real world example that I am using right now is a 4’ by 2’ heat mat which I normally use to sprout seed in spring. I am building a tiny house which has a thread here in the lounge. My LiFePo4 batteries and inverters are in the tiny house. The batteries have to be maintained above 35F and really should not go below 50F. I have one of my heat mats sandwiched between the 4 batteries and the temperature set to 68 degrees. It maintains all 4 batteries at about 55 degrees up to 65 degrees. The batteries have 60 kWh that can be pulled to power the heat mat. Under normal conditions, it uses about 2 kWh per night. The next day, the solar panels recharge the batteries if the sun is shining. With the capacity involved, the batteries would be fine with a full month of no sunshine.
I’m in Southern Illinois where we see temps below 0 and wind chills into the negative 20’s. I thought in a small pot it would be better to keep them inside. I also store my sprayers and other things that I don’t want to freeze in that room, so I would be killing 2 birds with 1 stone. Is there any downside to keeping them inside, even if they could survive outside? These are new starts from cuttings, root cuttings, and some tissue culture plants.
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It’s a fully insulated 14x23 room in my shed. I don’t have doors on it yet, but do have plastic covering the door openings. There is a refrigerator in there that does provide a little bit of residual heat from the compressor running. Last night it got down to 16 here and this morning at 7am it was 51 degrees in there.
In that case I’d agree with putting them away from dessicating winds, if they’re very young and tender. I’ve sometimes just covered stuff with leaves or packed in with bags of mulch and put small pots against a building. The only annoying thing about overwintering inside is ensuring they don’t get too dry or too wet.
I’ve heard great things about thermocube and was going to buy one for our radiant heat panels in our coops, but I can’t speak to the use of a space heater.
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You got a big shed!
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Ya it’s 40’x70’. I need to take some updated pics. This is the shed when we bought the place in 2020.
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