Sorry this may ramble a bit, but so much is going through my little head right now, I'm just letting it out as I think of it. This is bringing up lots of memories of when my dad started out with a small lean-to on the side of the house to sell tomato plants 35 years ago. That business grew several times until we had a single 40 X 50 greenhouse that took up the entire back yard. We now have 5 acres and multiple greenhouses at another location that I have run since 1997 and now produce and sell over 100,000 plants per season. So this is coming from a grower/retailer perspective. Check that you can sell items that aren't grown in your greenhouse. I have to grow 75% of what I sell on site in my zoning. Buy a greenhouse with the appropriate snow load/wind rating for your area. It doesn't take much wet snow to collapse a poorly designed greenhouse. I have two from a Canadian company-Harnois (the third is from a company that I think and hope are now out of business-they were awful to deal with). They were easy to put up and have worked great for us. The last one I bought (30 x 48-which probably the minimum you should consider) was about $7,000 nearly 10 years ago. This price included one heater and three roll up motors and two layers of plastic. I had to build my own end walls to save a little money but you can buy an endwall package separately. You will need electricity for the roll up vents (side and peak) and for the ignition for gas heater(s). But that requirement would be less than for exhaust fans for a ghs with no vents. I wouldn't risk my plants in somebody else's greenhouse that couldn't keep them heated if needed. Nor would I trust my hard work to a greenhouse made from PVC. You need one large enough that people can walk around comfortably and accommodate each vendor. Hoop houses generally don't have a lot of head room along the sides unless you get a high tunnel. If you expect the business to grow get a greenhouse that may be a little larger/wider than you think you need. Otherwise you will be replacing the small one real soon-kind of a waste of money. We went from lots of small greenhouses to a couple larger greenhouses to the single large house and now several large greenhouses. Buy something that is intended to be a greenhouse-you don't want to be jerry rigging something that might not work as expected. There are plenty of professional greenhouse manufacturers (Nexus, Atlas, Jaderloon, Conley, Harnois,etc) out there that will help you. They also will have the proper materials to use and be able to provide you with some guidance. You'll be much happier and the product will probably last a lot longer. Check out Greenhouse auction This is a past auction that still has 450,000 square feet of greenhouse left from a bankrupt nursery. They will arrange shipping for a fee. My hoop houses (20 x 48 & 17 x 48) are open at one end where I can pull the plastic up or lower it to get air and cool off the house. The other end has a regular sized door. The larger one is made so I can pull up the sides about 2 feet off the ground using ropes. Even when fully open, they get 100F + by late May or about 20-30ºF warmer than outside. I use these to hold plants-no customers allowed. Trust me, nobody wants to stay in those conditions for very long-customers or vendors. I also would be leery of the pest issue. Even if everyone has 100% pest free plants (extremely unlikely IMHO) you will get pests. Who will be responsible, and what kind of controls will you use? Preventative or curative? An ornamental grower will have different requirements than an a veggie or herb grower. You may have to have separate greenhouses and spray equipment etc. This idea opens you up to additional liability. If somebody else's plants are lost in your facility you'd better have insurance! Of course you should have insurance if the public will be on your property anyway (a hidden cost and a selling point to potential vendors) $25,000 is not a lot of money. You will run into lots of unexpected costs. Will you have to make other improvements to accommodate the public and vendors-like bathroom facilities? How quickly do you expect to get a return on your money? The people who you should listen to as far as the type of structure are the people who would be using it. What are their needs and concerns? Taking the plastic off in the winter raises a few comments/questions. I assume that you would recover in the late winter/early spring. I don't know about your area but in mine that time of the year is the worst time to try to stretch a huge piece of plastic because most days are breezy. It takes only the slightest breeze to fill a greenhouse cover like a giant sail. You have to do the job when there is no breeze otherwise, you will be miserable trying. It is also a job for several people. The larger the greenhouse the harder it is to cover. Although easier to cover a small greenhouse heats up extremely quickly and has other disadvantages as well. $10 a day is a lot to pay for a vendor-farmers markets in our area cost $50 for the whole season (May thru November, one day per week). Maybe you should charge for the whole season instead of by the day. Or do both but give a discount if they pay for the whole season up front. That gives them an additional incentive to show up everyday. You have to convince your vendors that you have something to offer for their money. And it needs to be something they can't do on their own and will make them money. Find out what they expect and need and then offer that to them. What would the advantage be to have their plants in your greenhouse if they have their own already. Is this advantage worth them paying a little extra money to you? Who will take care of promoting the market? Pay for advertising? Hope this helps!

Hi. You are confusing branching/forking with a Y. You'll know when a brug has formed a Y by looking at the foliage above the split. The base of the leaf will be uneven where it attaches to the petiole. Cuttings that are taken above a Y will usually bloom sooner then those taken from below because once a brug has Y'd subsequent Y's are faster to develop. I have a few brugs that are just beginning to form a Y. I'll post pics later today so you can see the difference. It's easier to see it then to try to describe it. I fertliize 1x/wk. In the beginning of the season I'll use a balanced fertilizer but switch to something with more phosphorus and potassium to promote blooms. The high nitrogen promotes vegetative growth. I also give my brugs micronutrients a couple times a month and discontinue feeding about 4 weeks before the end of the growing season. Your foliage looks healthy but they look a bit lanky. Are they getting enough sun? You want at least full am sun. Some brugs can take sun all day and others need protection from direct afternoon sun. I agree with the previous post that it's too late in the season to put them inground. Alow them to go dormant this winter and sink the pots next spring. P&C is one of the more common variegated brugs and shouldn't be too hard to find. You are best off looking for cuttings in the fall when most of us trim our plants back for winter storage. You'll probably get blooms this season. Just give it a bit more time. Some years it feels like I'm waiting forever for blooms.

Hi Tabby: First - congrats on your new greenhouse! It sounds like you've got a great project to help brighten up your coming winter. As to accessories, you will definitely need a heater to warm the greenhouse through the winter. You may need a thermostat depending on what sort of heater you get. A fan (or fans) is probably a good idea. You may also need to have some sort of a vent to let hot air vent out in the spring & summer months, as your greenhouse will heat up a lot on sunny days. You will need to decide what uses you will put the greenhouse to. Do you want to just winter stuff over - as in have the plants go dormant & start regrowing in the spring? Or do you want to have the plants actively growing in the winter. That will determine how much heating capacity you need. Just keeping a small greenhouse at 35 degrees Fahrenheit will not need a big heater, but nothing will be actively growing in that sort of a greenhouse. Different plants will need different minimum temperatures to ensure growth - many orchids need minimum night temperatures of 50 or 55 Fahrenheit. Herbs and leafy vegetables can probably get by with overnight minimums of 40 or 45 degrees. Some tropicals do not want to drop below 60 or 65 Fahrenheit. Cannas and many elephant ears are perfect for cool dry storage (a garage, attic or basement). Just let the frost kill the tops. Then dig the roots, clean off most of the soil & store in slightly moist peat moss. I would think that most salvias could survive in a cool to cold greenhouse in a dormant state over the winter. They probably would do better on the dry side as well. Hope that this helps! Dan

Ahh, you guys are die-hard. I love it. :O) Can't wait to see the pre-game banter between you two this week. Christan, thanks for checking into the statue. If I can find it then I will be getting it (if shipping isn't too astronomical). LOL. I bet that big boy is heavy. One thing I wanted to mention with getting ready for winter sowing is the organization of it all. I found it really helpful to start an excel spreadsheet with the seed name, when planted, when it germinated, when planted out, oh and I always assign a container number to it when I first sow the seeds in the containers too. I then numbered the containers with paint pen (not a sharpee) to match the spreadsheet number for each seed type as well as tucked plant name tags in there with the seeds. It was a double safety for me when and if the labels washed off or got knocked over and out of the pots. (that happened to me when I tripped over the trays I had the containers in, btw. LOL) I did better with 2 liter containers than I did with milk jugs. Turns out that the soil was deeper in the 2 liters and the plants may have liked that better. That was just my humble observation. No worries on going off topic around here. We all enjoy good conversations and it usually leads to great friendships. :O) Tracy