Buy old sheer fabric curtains from garage sales & thrift stores for a fraction of the cost of the commercial row cover. They're light enough to lay directly on top of plants on cool nights. To prop up you could use empty glass or plastic bottles or jugs on stakes or try upturned plastic crates on stakes. I've also used reused upside down clear plastic containers from bakery items, product packaging, & storage containers like Sterlite or Rubbermaid weighed down with a rock or a thick stick. Prop up a corner with a stake to allow for ventilation during the day. Can also stack brick or blocks of wood on the sides to support the containers for higher plants. It looks a bit crazy with the various containers & more unified with the sheer fabric curtains. In the fall we regularly cover plants with the curtains in early evening & remove in mid-morning. If more than damp I bring them inside to dry, but if not I'll just put them inside my car to put out again the next night. Our gardens are along the driveway so the car is a handy spot out of the way. They don't really get too dirty & with 2 people holding each end you can snap them a bit to fling off dirt or water.

I just received a beautiful Oregon cedar 8x10 greenhouse as a retirement gift from my husband in May. I have been an avid gardener in Butte, Montana for 25 years. So, I thought a greenhouse would be a nice addition to adding longevity for my tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. There are 3 raised beds in the greenhouse. At the bottom of each bed I put a layer of small stones. Then black landscape fabric, followed by 12 inches of soil. In one bed I planted 3 tomato plants, the second 2 cucumbers, the third 4 pepper plants. After 3 weeks all the plants were dying. The tomatoes had leaf curl, end blossom rot, and yellowing leaves. The peppers and cucumbers never did "take off". I went to the nursery that sold me the soil for the beds and asked for a hard copy of their soil analysis. The pH in the soil was 9, and all the other soil components were low. I removed all the sad looking plants. Then I removed about 1/3 the soil in all the beds, and I patiently re-added manure, peat moss and store bought topsoil to each bed. After rototilling all the soil mixtures together in the beds, I replanted the same things. And the same thing happened with the plants. My next step was to have a soil analysis done with the county extension office. The pH level was now 6.5, however there was a "trace" of Nitrogen in the soil...potassium levels were very high. Today I removed all the soil from the beds right down to the small stones...hosed down the beds and am starting over. While I will probably wait until spring to add any medium to the beds, any input would be greatly appreciated.

The make up of a potting soil is actually less important than what plant nutrients are being provided. Almost no "soil mix" will be able to supply all of the plant nutrients needed for the entire crop cycle, unless it includes slow-release fertilizers. Commercial greenhouse vegetables are being grown in rice hulls, sand, rock-wool, bark shavings, peat, coir, water (hydroponic), etc. What matters the most for nutritious vegetable production is what nutrients are provided to the plants, aeration, and water availability. Hopefully the link below will be useful. Here is a link that might be useful: potting mixes This post was edited by cuestaroble on Sun, Jun 1, 14 at 19:39

To keep it simple, build your raised bed by justing add organic matter to the existing soil. It doesn't matter what you add----homemade compost, bagged/purchased compost, mushroom compost, chopped/shredded autumn leaves, old spoiled hay (if you know it doesn't contain herbicide residue), even finely shredded bark/humus (I buy it in bags where it is labeled as Soil Conditioner)---just whatever you can find that will simultaneously improve the soil's capacity to both drain well and to hold moisture. If you don't want to work the organic matter into the soil, do what Bon suggested and just put it on top of the existing soil. Over time, the organic matter gets carried down into the soil in many ways---via the action of your trowel when you plant, via watering, and via earth-burrowing creatures like beetles and earthworms. You don't have to do anything fancy. I did a lot of double digging in my front garden, but not until I'd been growing things in it for a few years and already had improved the soil a lot. When we first moved here, you couldn't break up the dense, compacted clay more than 1-2" deep even with a powerful rear-tine tiller so double digging at that point was out of the question. We were in drought and the clay was like concrete. I had to be patient and work with the soil for about a decade before I could finally double dig it myself with a shovel, but eventually I did true double digging where you dig out two shovel depths and amend to that depth. In 1999 it was unimaginable that we ever would be ever to double-dig that clay, but now I can double dig the soil beneath any raised bed easily. Since the raised bed above grade level sits atop double-dug soil, most of my plants now are growing in triple-dug soil. It only took us almost two decades to get the soil improved that much. It might not take you nearly as long because maybe your clay isn't a badly compacted as our was, but patience and not expecting it all to happen in the first year or two definitely pays off. Even in the early years long before the soil was good enough to double-dig, we got great results---even in the first year or two when there really wasn't that much organic matter in the soil yet and it wasn't yet deep in the soil. It is just that every year the yields and plant health got better and better. And, from the viewpoint of the garden, every year it became easier and easier to plant and to weed because the clay was easier to work with. When I pull weeds, as long as they haven't gone to seed, I don't even bother carrying them to the compost pile anymore. Why bother? I just lay them on top of the ground as mulch and let them decompose in place. It might not look beautiful, but the weeds decompose right there in place, releasing nutrients into the soil as they do so. It is the most efficient method of soil improvement I've ever done. Sometimes I think people get carried away and make it harder than it has to be. And, here's one warning about raised beds inside a greenhouse. My cats thought that I was building them big litter boxes inside a nice, warm greenhouse. I ditched the idea of greenhouse raised beds after that, moved the improved soil to the garden, and went back to growing in containers in the greenhouse. The cats have been yelled at enough that they know to stay out of containers, but it is a lot harder to keep them out of raised beds. My cats largely are kept out of the fenced garden now for the same reason. It has an 8' fence and gates I keep closed to keep them out. It is easier for me than letting them come into the garden and then having to chase them out to keep them from using the raised beds there as litter boxes. If you don't have cats, it won't be an issue, unless your neighbor has cats. Our neighbor's cats come over and play with our cats, so I kinda have to pick and choose my battles since there's always cats around and underfoot. I just could't imagine fighting to keep the cats out of the greenhouse's raised beds all winter long because I need to keep the doors and vents open so the greenhouse doesn't overheat on sunny days. Composting inside a greenhouse can work, as long as you have good air flow, but a compost pile inside a greenhouse can attract field mice and voles (and possums, skunks, squirrels and other little animals) to the greenhouse if you're putting kitchen scraps on your compost pile. For that reason, i don't compost inside the greenhouse. Dawn