Planning Ahead

I am sure that most of us are now harvesting the last of our summer crops, yet it seems like only yesterday that we were sowing seeds. So now is a good time to plan ahead and decide what we will do better or different for next year.
I have promised to get myself a heated propagator to get a head start and then to try and get a 'greenhouse within my greenhouse' once they have been transplanted. I am also going to try to insulate the lower part of my poly tunnel as much as I can, making a second skin with bubble wrap, or some other similar insulation material.

Here is a good way to give extra protection to young plants, notice the small night-lite candles for a little heat when there is a really cold night, which should just keep the frost off of the plants.
 (pictures courtesy of BiboWaggins)  














Here is a link to my Amazon shop showing a few propagators




Sherry AK from the Tomatoville forum supplied me with these fantastic pictures of how to really pamper your plants .


Across the pond now,  it seems that they like to pamper their plants even more, and you can't beat a light box in the lounge! Not as crazy as it seems if you have the room.
Young plants need plenty of light and heat, not enough light and you will have thin leggy plants. Also to get good development of the first few trusses you do need temperatures to be around 15 degrees minimum in the day, and slightly less at night. Of course, you will still get healthy plants below those temperatures and to be honest last year I did have a good setting rate on my first trusses, but they did take a long time to mature. 








Plants raised in such nice surroundings would hate to be sent out into a cold greenhouse, so Sherry then moves them to the sun room. As you can see, there is plenty of light even from above, but what a great start these plants are going to have.   


Once the harshness of winter is over, Sherry moves her plants into more natural surroundings in the greenhouse. Sherry does live in Alaska, so you can understand why she has to share her house with her plants, so as to have plants mature enough for the short summer. The tomatoes are moved into the greenhouse in May, and the first frost can occur  from the start of September.



I would like to thank both BilboWaggins and Sherry for letting me use their pictures, some people seem  to be a little protective about their pictures, but I sometimes wonder how they learnt to do things in the first place, without someone sharing information with them!
So on that note, if anyone has some unique pictures that they would like to share that are relevant to my post; I, and my followers would really appreciate it.

Comments

  1. Hi Steve, lots going on here at present therefore I am extremely behind on reading blogs.

    You say that the first two pictures of mini greenhouses are from "Big Mally" at the GYO forum. I have no idea who Big Mally is, but those pictures are of MY greenhouse.

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  2. PS: can I refer you back to your own blog post dated 2nd May this year entitled "Keeping Frost Off Seedlings"?

    Thank you.

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  3. Opps sorted Bilbo, I had quite a few pictures in the past from Big Mally On the GYO forum, I totally forgot those were yours.

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  4. Morning Steve, thank you for sorting that out.

    You write I sometimes wonder how they learnt to do things in the first place.

    Perhaps some people do what I did? Had what seemed like a bright idea and got on with it {grin}. I may have seen a "greenhouse in a greenhouse" at some point in the distant past but have no recollection of doing so. My problem was wanting to protect seedlings from frost and not being prepared to bear the cost of heating the whole g/house. I am sure I'm not the first person to come up with this idea and I definitely won't be the last. Necessity being the Mother of Invention and all that ....

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  5. I think I was having a little dig at some people who do not like to share information, because like I said, someone told them in the first place. Like you say most ideas have been thought up by someone else and we just manipulate them to our own circumstances.

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