I just started up, too. I counted 257 tomato seedlings just now, mostly in solo cups. I put up my second greenhouse over the winter, it's 18x48 and should hold about 100 tomato plants in 5-gallon buckets. I think I can get the earliest tomatoes to market with container plants. My cukes in 5-gallon buckets also did well last year, and I plan to have more of those.

I am going to try some hydroponics, too. I built a 4x8 setup to grow lettuce; I hope it works out. I am going to experiment with some hydro tomatoes and cukes, but I'm scared to dedicate too much space to it.

It's been a cold winter, and it's nice to be in the 90 degree greenhouse. I think I'm getting a tan already :)

Having grown up in my Dad's commercial greenhouses in Indiana, I tend to take a utilitarian approach to greenhousing, i.e. far more attention to usefulness than beauty. The following photos definitely show this.

Down here, we're in the middle of the winter growing/harvesting season. In this climate, we harvest baby lettuce and swiss chard all winter in a squirrel/jay-proof "screenhouse". We have to grow 4-5 crops of lettuce for a continuous supply, but just one swiss chard crop supplies us all winter. Most winters we have to cram the lettuce into the greenhouse a time or two for a day or two at a time, when the nighttime temp falls below 26ÃÂF. It never got that cold this past winter, so the lettuce stayed in the screenhouse continuously.

Lettuce nearing end of harvesting (2d crop of season):
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Romaine and Green Lollo 2d crop:
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Cherokee Red 2d crop:
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Next Lettuce Crop (3d of the season):
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Romaine in 3d crop:
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Red Lollo and Cherokee in 3d crop:
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Bright Lights chard:
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Fordhook Giant chard:
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The spring tomato and herb seedlings are well along. The herbs can stay outside, but the tomatoes must go in containers which are moved into the screenhouse when the lettuce is finished, and as the tomatoes begin to mature, again to combat the squirrels and jays. If successful, the tomatoes will be ready for harvesting in May through June.

Tomato, basil. parsley and sage seedlings:
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Tomato volunteer "rescued" in October:

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Three of the four tomatoes on the volunteer after five months:
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Overwintered herbs:
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Overwintered Meyer Lemon:
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Hi Karin, were getting our greenhouse going to. Last week planted flower seeds and already have Petunias and Snapdragons coming up. Next to plant onions and tomatoes. The tomatoes I'll start in the shop under lights so they get a good start. It was 60 degrees today in Park City MT. so we got a start on our yard to.

Fun to see the other reports!

Cole Robbie, I love the scale that you work at. 257 tomato seedlings, holy cow! What type of market do you grow for? Hydroponic lettuce sounds promising. I hope you'll keep us informed of how that works out. For your tomatoes in containers, do they keep producing all summer? Or do they run out of steam in a container? You must keep them fed, I imagine.

Billala, wow I am drooling over all that lettuce! Is that just for your family or do you sell some? It looks perfectly happy and I love the blend of colors and textures. The screenhouse is a brilliant idea for a warm climate that is occupied by garden thieves. That Meyer Lemon is enviable. Yummy!

Bob, 60 degrees, seriously? Wow. That makes for some fine greenhouse weather. Nice to hear that the flower seeds are already coming along. But it's crazy that you can get out in your yard already. Our yard is still 100% snow covered. Amazing what a difference in climate even though you are not that far from us.

Hi Karin,
Your Bok Choi and Buttercrunch Lettuce plants look awesome! The photos look like they should be in a seed catalog! Your off to a great start for the new season and your GH is all clean and pretty too. Doesn't hurt to have Daffodils blooming as well - You are way ahead of me even if your carrots are lagging behind a little. Guess I better get out to the GH and clean things up a bit for planting. Thanks for the inspiration with your photos!

Karin - That looks like a lot of lettuce, but when you're harvesting baby leaves it takes a lot. During cold weather, it takes 200 plants in 4" pots to supply two of us and three daughters who live nearby with a large salad five or six nights a week (yes, we're all lettuce fiends). In warmer weather the lettuce comes on faster and we give it to neighbors to keep up with it.

Wow, everyone's setups and crops look fantastic. I love the idea of the caged screenhouse. Might implement something like that here, thanks for the idea.

Thanks Karin. Those 257 are just the plants I started inside. I should have another thousand or two coming soon, counting peppers and other plants. We grow for farmer's market and our own small farm. I did have a craigslist ad for a while last year, and I expect to hear back from many of those customers this year.

Last year I had a few Early Girls in 5-gallon buckets in the greenhouse and had tomatoes by May, which is two months early for me. So now I am trying a high tunnel full of bucket plants, of several different varieties. I am trying to find the best variety to grow for my purpose; most of them are early red determinates.

My container tomatoes grow and yield well...until the summer temperature starts getting into the 90's. Then they get tough skins and a sour taste, and I end up dumping them because the garden tomatoes are starting to come in by that time. The flavor of the container fruit is surprisingly good, but soil-grown summer plants are always better. I have good soil, so container growing is not a year-round affair.

Thanks for this thread, Karin. Since my greenhouse is used mainly to shelter ornamental plants (nothing edible, and most of them are older plants) these photos are a lot of fun to see. It will be another month or so before it's very safe to move many plants to the patios. But at least we don't have snow, like you!

It's inspiring to see what you all are doing. The bok choi in the first photo is beautiful enough to grow just for the looks.

OK - The photos on this post motivated me to do some planting! I am jealous of Those of you that live in warmer climates (but not enough to want to move) - so I will just have to improvise - with 2+' of snow on the ground and freezing temps in an unheated GH. I have no idea if this will be successful but We are going to give it a go! The GH temp this morning was 32 degrees. The tomatoes survived the night and I will set the timer to give them as much darkness as I can but keeping them warm as OS temps dictate. As we move towards spring - I should be able to give them more darkness. If anyone as tried this method please give us some advice! The GH is going for the season. Oh, by the way - I still have back up starts in case this idea fails...... We had ripe tomatoes the middle of June in 2012. We are one month earlier planting tomatoes in our GH this year. If this idea works - we may have ripe tomatoes by the end of May??

This post was edited by Hudson...WY on Mon, Mar 11, 13 at 20:39

Here is another photo of our $30 - 400 watt furnace - haha. So far seedlings appear happy?

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What a bright idea! (haha)
Wow you have a lot of snow still. But the seedlings look great, nice work. That would be amazing if you can get ripe fruit by May. You are motivating me to try for an earlier start! We are out of frozen tomato sauce now so that is another motivator to try to grow more.

Cole Robbie - thanks for filling us in on some of the details of your plan. Nice that you can just use the GH tomatoes to get you started and then switch over to the garden tomatoes. Best of both worlds!

It's definitely fun to see the happenings in other people's greenhouses. Thanks for chiming in!

Hudson:, I use the heat same source for my greenhouse in early spring, I have a 4' x 8' x 4' high poly box that i use with the bulbs inside, There is typicall a 10-15 degree difference from inside the box to outside temps, Been using this for 3 years now , works great in zone 2 Chilly alberta

Heavyoilguy,
I have noticed the same temp difference. Have you had any problems with the seedlings not getting enough darkness? Are you seedlings open in the GH during the day and then exposed to the light bulbs all night? Just wondering if I need to give the plants some dark time if temperatures permit? How many weeks are your seedlings typically exposed to the bulbs before it is warm enough to leave the bulbs off?

More greenhouse progress today!

I started up some warm weather seeds. I planted tomatoes that will be grown in the GH - Super Marzano and Sweet Baby Girl. I also spent considerable time searching the web today for some new varieties to try. I just ordered 'Ernie's Plump' so I could try another type of sauce tomato. I love the Super Marzano but last year they suffered from blossom end rot, as many sauce-type tomatoes do. This one seems different and gets good reviews so I will try one of those along with Super Marzano.

I also am still searching for the ultimate early, sandwich-worthy tomato that I can grow in the greenhouse. I've tried Early Wonder, Matina, Goliath, and this year I will try Moskvich. We'll see!

In addition to tomatoes I started eggplant, peppers, basil, and more greens. I still need to plant onion seeds but am feeling somewhat lazy at the moment. :)

We had a crazy warm week that melted all our snow in the yard. But it's supposed to snow again tomorrow.

This is such a great time of year to be a greenhouse owner. Without one there would be no gardening at all, and it feels great to go in there, soak up the warmth and get this year's crops going. I hope all is well in everyone else's greenhouses and cold frames too. :)

You are a month ahead of me with everything but tomatoes - the veggies that get planted outside have to wait until at least April to seed for may/June planting. Transplant onions are coming the middle of April - you aught to try some transplants this year?

I did get some lobelias and Impatiens moved to 2" soil blocks today though - getting ready to be moved to the GH. Just showing the Lobelias here - sure great to be seeing green!

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Tomato seedlings are growing! It appears our light bulb GH furnace is working - Last night OS temp was 2 degrees and forecast is lower for tonight. The GH temp was 26 degrees but under the frost blanket it was 46 degrees.

The plants appear to be happy - Hope it warms up before I have to figure out a higher cage to support the frost cover for these plants. This is how they looked today:

German Giant, Super Marzano, Better Boy, Brandy Boy and Sweet Baby Girl.

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Whoa! Those are huge and healthy looking. Kudos to you, clearly you have worked out an effective method with the light bulbs.

We had a very cold week as well. It was magical for the skiing, but it looks like this week will go back to being warm. This time of year I am always torn between wanting good greenhouse weather and good ski weather. But at least one part of me is happy either way. :)

Many of my seedlings are up but I've been moving them inside at night because it's been subfreezing in the GH at night. This week I'm going to get the heat mats set up inside the GH and since it will be warmer they will be able to stay in there at night.

I am sorry if I am boring you with this - but it is all fascinating to me! I would never have believed that I could keep tomato plants alive in -4 degree temperatures without heating a GH! The temperature swing yesterday in the GH was huge! 95 degrees in the afternoon (full sun) and 19 degrees at night. The OS temps did not swing that much, 23 degree high with the low of -4 degrees. The light bulbs and frost blanket appear to have protected the tomatoes with a low of 36-37 degrees under the blanket. This is what it looked like this morning:

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You appear to be managing your GH more appropriately for the time of year and temperatures Karin. My wife keeps reminding me that mother nature will win in the end and I keep pushing my luck - I am sure she is right!

Wow, Hudson, you're even nuttier than me. My night temps have been dipping into the mid-20's. My high tunnel is only a single layer of poly this year, so heating it has been a lot of work. I have to feed the wood furnace about four times over the course of the night.

I use a pallet on blocks with plywood sides and top; it looks like a big plywood box. There's a cheap space heater and my germinating seeds inside. On top of the box is where most of my plants have been spending the night:
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Our weather may be changing my tomato plan. I had hoped for a long and warm spring like we had last year. It was perfect for container growing. But this year, if it goes from snow to 100 degrees before the container plants finish, then they're not going to work out so well. Like the song lyric says, "so much depends on the weather."

Hi Cole_Robbie - yes I think I am nuttier than you - just ask my wife - haha! I am glad I do not have to feed a wood furnace though - especially four times a night - how do you get any sleep? It appears you have amazing results starting your seeds! They are coming up every where!

How about sharing a photo of your container tomatoes in your high tunnel? As I remember from other posts - you have several huge high tunnels? I am considering building a high tunnel for other veggies and would like to see what you are doing in them this time of year?

You're looking at most of what I have going right now, unfortunately. Last year at this time I was picking cucumbers. You can see this year's cukes in the middle left of that pic. They are just sprouts. Nothing will grow without sunshine, even when I keep it from freezing at night.

Thank you for the compliment, but my idea of huge is 10x what I have now. This high tunnel is 14x48 with a gravel floor. The new one I just built is 18.5x48', but does not have the plastic on it yet, because I don't have enough plants to fill it. I bought ground cover cloth for the floor and a friend gave me some pallets, but beyond that I have not ordered everything yet. My plan up to now had been to use 11-gallon grow bags fed with an automated drip system. That would have been perfect in last year's weather. This year, we are so far into spring that I am starting to wonder if I'll have enough time to get a crop of tomatoes before the weather hits 95+ degrees. When that happens, I get thick skins and bitter fruit. All I can think of to do would be to just bury the entire container or root ball into the ground at that point.

I like your idea with the cover and the light bulbs. Notice that you are three zones north of me and your plants look farther along than mine. Do they stretch at all toward the bulbs? I don't see yours doing that, but my worry would be that mine somehow would.

A couple of plants lean just a touch - I only have 23 total tomato plants so they are easy to manage - this system may not work for you in that you have so many plants. Another problem I have is that the tomato plants will soon reach the top of the wire cage and before it is warm enough to remove the frost cover - and - they will need vertical support. I have a couple of weeks to figure that out.

I do not have to worry about the high temperatures as you do though - Greenhousing in zone 3 does have it's advantages I am learning - running night time light bulbs must be cheaper than air cooling?

I like your red solo cups - lets have a party! Haha

I wonder if green light bulbs would make any difference? Plants are not supposed to be able to "see" green light.

As for cooling, my end doors open. Oriented to the prevailing wind, that works well. When temps get into the 80s with sun, I have to roll up the sides. And when it hits 90+ degrees in June, I wave a white flag and surrender to summer.

Those are the generic brand of Solo cups from Sam's. I don't know why, but they are about 1/3rd the price of the Solo brand. Maybe Solo had to pay Toby Keith a lot of money to sing that song :)

These tomatoes are growing! I went out to the GH today and several of the plants have grown through the tunnel supports (18")! I had to go out in the garden area and round up some 24" supports and replace the 18" to give the tomato plants some growing room. Looks like I need to support the plants now too.

Then on closer inspection - we have our first clusters of tomatoes - Yeah ! The Super Marzano, Better Boy, Brandy Boy and German Giant - all have clusters developing!
Awesome!

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Many many moons ago, an elderly gardener I knew had a cold frame in Zn 3 and heated it with a light bulb. Only with a twist. He put a galvanized pail over the bulb and turned it into a radiant heater. He had wonderful crops. With the pail upside down on the dirt, there was no light leakage on the plants.... just heat

Here is a link that might be useful: Lively Dirt - The Garden Blog