When temps drop below freezing outside, they drop below freezing in the greenhouse as well, Tom. We use a small electric heater and sometimes add a heat lamp. If I remember to close the doors before the sun drops down low, the heat collected during the day will last into the night and the heater comes on with a thermostat. Temps here usually only dip low just before daylight. We keep a Coleman heater in reserve, but never had to use it last year. We also have a big kerosene heater, which would probably fry the plants, lol. If your basement has windows, it would be overkill. At worst, you could have some little trolleys to trundle flats of seedlings in and out before the last frost date when they need more sun. I used an old kitchen trolley in the toolshed. Harbor Freight has some nice little tool trolleys that they put on sale frequently. The cat is going to move to a new wood cat hut atop the dog hut when we get it finished. His former cat hut, a cardboard box, has been trashed. The door is back on the dog hut and Buffy has already moved in. The dog hut has a heat lamp and the cat hut is on top where the heat rises to heat it, too. The whole contraption is on the south side of the house on the carport out of the prevailing north wind. Nell

Hi, Toni. I know what you mean about not having enough space between shelves. Most shelf only can fit the pot not the pot+plant. The distance in between the shelves is not large enough. The shelf I bought comes with 6 shelves, but I only put 3 on to have a larger space about 2' in between each other. Although the top shelve will not get much sun. I can put some trailing plants on it so they hanging down to catch some sun ray, I hope. I am going to put a 4' long floracent light fixture right under each shelves to provid additional light. I will be careful when I work with electric. It is more dangerous than just put a wood stand together. The nails are for the wood light fixture stand. I originally was going to go with the PVC pipe. but it cost more to buy PVC pipes unless you have scraped PVC pipes on hand. To put one stand in each room, I need put together more than just one so it is more economical to buy those leftover wood to build them . Don't you love Menard? I go there almost every week... Check out their fall plants sale... their pots price is great... their cleaning suppliers... small applicance price is great after rebate... They start to carry food items now... I bought watermelon, apple, onion, potaotes there... strange , isn't it? Behind every visible color is the frequency of wave. The full Spectrum light is a light that is designed to provid full range or closer to full range of sun ray wave from warm color at lower end of freqency to whiter color at the end of higher frequency. It also extended into part of invisible wave such as UV which natural sun has. The plants growth, in general, responds to the light frequency they get, or requires certain light frequency to trigger either flower bud, fruiting, or just grow leaves. I am kind of lazy to figure out which plant needs which ( thinking about having to remember at end of the season and lable the light for next year before put in storage boxes... lot of works) so I just bought full spectrum to all the plants. But if you know what you want grow, just want grow foilage, or want grow fruits in the winter... a targeted color range grow light might work better. you can find most of common size and wattage lights at Menards. Again, I love Menards. I wish I could clean my plants before I bring them in. In reality, I just have too many pots to clean them all. I in general just inpsect the plants and outside the pots to make sure no slug hiding somewhere. I have a cat, so I can't put any ant poison out in the yard or inside house. The ant is a big problem for me. I do not mind spiders, especailly the jumping spider that doesn't wave web and it eat insects , It is very good at controling mites in winter time. I want them to come inside with the plants... My neighbor put his garbage can outside, and the rotten chicken smell draw quite few flies near and I saw the jumping spider got one of the flies in my citrus tree, amazing... I got the Fish Emulsion tip from one of your posting, thanks again for sharing this secrat. I spray my plants every week on schedule. squirrels seem dislike the fishy smell. I am going to pay closer attention to moth to see if moth likes the fish smell on my fruit tree leaves or not. Interestingly, I have never had mealybug problem, knock the wood. I have seen scale, aphis, mites, sometimes whitefly in the past but have never seen mealybug on my plants. I think I have parasitic wasps live somewhere nearby that takes care a lot of my bug problems. Yes, soap, garlic, hot pepper... all works or does not completely work ... neem oil also works for mealybug Toni, I must say that you grow your plants in much scientific way, no wonder your plants look so gorgeous, both yours and Mike's. I've never used a hygrometers just for plants. My plants get whatever the humidity I got in the house. I am probably lucky that I don't have a very humidity sensitive plant in my collection YET. Boiling some hot water certain a very good way to increas room humidity. It is a very cost effective and practical way. You are a such creative person. I hope you are willing to share more tips with me in the future. In general, I don't fertilize my plant, but my rule of the thumb is that if the plants are "sleeping", no need for food;If they are awake, actively growing, feed a little, water a little. Some of my plants are in and out now, but I am hoping I don't have to bring them all in for the winter till Oct./Nov. When are you going to move all your plants in? Mike, sounded like you and Toni is having a fun friendly competition. Frankly, you both grow beautifull, productive plants beyond the "zones". I certainly agree the FE is one of big secret for such lushes, healthy, pest free plants besides loving , tender care, fertilizer, and everything else ... I wish I could just toss my plant through the windows... The heavy ones might toss me through windows instead. How did you manage to keep people from steal your plants in your drive way while you are at work? My neighborhood is relative safe... we don't need to lock doors when we are out shipping. So far, I put some large , not attactive plants in my drive way but I am worried if I put nicer, blooming plants there, someone walks by and see the plants in the drive way, and might decide to take few pots with them home. As you mentioned the bug with a lot of legs, Do you know the bug called rolypoly, I thought this is its name, I might spelled it wrong...the gray bug lives under the pots. It curve into a ball when you touch it... is it a good bug, bad bug , or do-no-harm bug?

Chad, Jay gave you great advice, and I just want to add a little additional info about the effect of cold temperatures on pepper plants. Research shows that pepper plants exposed to temperatures in the low 40s even briefly often remain stunted and nonproductive for months, if not for the entire season. So, in my opinion, it pays to keep those plants in a location where the temps never drop below 50. I tend to start my tomatoes and peppers at about the same time, but the tomatoes go outside to the screened-in porch or patio much, much earlier than the peppers to be hardened off. I keep the peppers inside until there is no chance of them being exposed to temps lower than 50. I usually plant the peppers about 2 weeks after the tomato plants. The rule of thumb I go by is that the soil temperature at planting depth has to be at a steady 55 degrees or warmer for 3 days before I plant and I'd really rather it be at that temperature for 5 to 7 days before I plant. Pepper roots that are transplanted into soil below 55 degrees will not grow and can be damaged by temperatures below that threshold. Even though the plant roots will eventually begin to grow again after stalling in the cold soil, they often suffer irreparable harm. Any time I have tried to push the limits and plant my peppers too early, they have struggled the entire year so I don't try to push those limits any more. Don't get me wrong....it is important to plant peppers, especially sweet peppers, as early as you reasonably can so they can flower and set peppers before the high temps start impacting pollination. Still, it is equally important to make sure the air temps and soil temps are in the right range too. It is sort of a Goldilocks thing where you want the temps to be 'just right'. Dawn

Thanks for the comments, we are really pleased with how it's turned out. Plus it's in a relavely protected spot, so it's come through it's first full winter unscathed...so far anyway. We keep an electric fan heater with thermostat on 24/7 to maintain frost free temps at the moment as nights are still chilly and the furthest 2/3rds is bubble wrapped for added insulation. Topher, yes that did hurt!!! The one above was actually a £1000+ insurance replacement for a older one that did the same thing! This was made out of much thicker gauge aluminium with strengthening brackets all over the place (obviously not enough!) plus an inner door/bracing structure fastened to the floor/sides/roof half way down. This time we went for toughened glass and the whole thing was really sturdy, BUT very heavy...we now think the weight of the toughened glass was it's downfall, literally, as once the gales started to move the top of the structure a tiny bit...(they blew at it's longest side)...it became unstable at it's weakest point..where the uprights joined the base plate and the whole lot fell over sideways in one go. Here's the lessen we learned the hard way...don't build in the same place again where you have lost two previous g/houses...so we didn't. Hope you have great success with your new one. Gill.