Hi there. I am in z 6a according to the new USDA zone maps... in western Mass. First, i want to ensure you that you certainly can GROW crops 4 seasons. I just harvested beets that i sowed in november. I have been eating lettuce and spinnach all winter and just picked raddishes that i sowed in late january. So don't think you are limited to using the GH as a big cold storage cellar. I looked at a few designs before starting mine. I looked at the sunny john design which has plennums running beneath the surface to heat up the soil. I rejected that as too expensive and too much work. There are studies that show moderate success with that. I looked at excavating the soil and replacing with stone and circulating the air through the stones. Again, while it has some benefits, i would need power and the stone would be expensive. I went with the solaroof design which is a double greenhouse that uses soap bubbles as an insulator at night. I never got that far as i still haven't run power out to the GH. So i just have a double walled gh, with 2 foot minimum airspace. My specs: GH interior 48 x 22 GH exterior 52' x 26' GH height interior 11' GH height exterior 14' Both were built with commercial grade greenhouse tubing. If i were to do it again i would save $$ by framing the interior with something cheaper. Heating: None Ventillation: 8 foot wide x 2 foot high gable ends vent. The vents are at the peak of the gh to allow heat to more easily exit. I also have an 8 foot wide door on one end. I will likely add a door on the other end to aid in cross ventillation. I never added the bubbles. I would like to so i could determine if i get additional zona protection. Some of the more interesting "successes". I grow tomatoes into december. I grow all sorts of cool weather crops: peas, beets spinnach, lettuce, raddishes, chard, green onions, dill, thyme, rosmary throughout the winter. Some i actually re-sow midwinter. I "overwintered" citrus, which died back but sent out new shoots. potatoes keep trying to grow but die back with each "Freeze". They are now growing in ernest. I put "freeze" in quotes as i am not sure of the interior temps. Outside temps reached -14F last year and i still did not have ice in the GH. I used to get ice, but i built a water tank that holds 1500 gallons and have not had frost or ice in the GH since. I have fish in the tank. I have not read the winter garden book you have. I have done none of the calculations regarding thermal masses. I can't tell you whether row covers are better than a second GH layer, but if the book says you can't GROW crops but can only overwinter them, then based on my experience, row covers don't do the job as well. I do not have below the ground insulation. I grow my crops directly in the soil. Ask away...

Where I grew up we had Hurricane season and recovering from Hurricane season. Here on Colorado's Front Range the seasons are perfect. We have 4 seasons. Just about the time you are getting tired of the activities associated with the current season, the weather changes and you have a new season. Our winters are not unbearable. Except for this year, when it snows it's usually 4-10 inches in one day and the sun is shining braightly the next day and melts it all. We only get snow every 3 weeks or so. The fall is wonderful with color and dry, cool days. Spring is when everything turns into amazing, bright colors. The days are still cool and everyone is out riding bikes and beginning to do lots of outdoor activities. And our summers never get really hot. We have several days in the upper 90's, but our humidity is usually in the single digits and very little rain. And, if you want a REAL winter, you can just drive a short distance (less than 60 minutes) into the mountains and have more snow than you'll ever need. In the summer if the heat is too bad, just drive right back into the mountains where the heat rarely reaches 90.

Bon, Really, it isn't even time to put any warm-season edible plants in the ground yet except for corn in far southern OK, but I wanted to start some zinnias and basil and a few other warm-season things indoors. I don't even remember the OSU-recommended dates to start putting warm-season plants and seeds in the ground---probably April 10th for most things. Since I plant by the combination of soil temp, air temp and forecast, I don't remember the OSU dates as well as I should. I've got everything in the ground that I can plant at the present time except for a few flats of flowers I'm raising from seed, so I'll play around with starting a few herbs and flowers that I can put in the ground 4 to 6 weeks from now. Having had high temperatures this week in the mid- to upper-80s, I am worried we'll get too hot too early so went ahead and planted beans and corn this week. It is early for the beans, but we are unseasonably warm and so is our soil, so I think I'll get away with planting them early. It still is too cool for peppers, melons, okra, squash, cucumbers, southern peas and the like. Some years it gets so hot so early down here that plants that are heat-sensitive, like beans, start dropping their blossoms almost as soon as they start making blooms, so if there is anything I'll push in the ground a tiny bit early, it is bush beans. I don't rush pole beans or Lima beans quite as much as they don't seem to tolerate being planting a touch early as well as the bush beans do. Most of the veggie gardens we drive by on a routine basis on our way to town are either plowed or rototilled and bare, some with big puddles of water standing in them, so not many folks here have planted anything yet. A couple of them aren't even plowed or rototilled yet. I wouldn't have planted anything if I didn't have raised beds that dry out more quickly. I wouldn't dare put anything in the grade level soil yet because it likely would just rot. Even folks near us who usually get their onions in the ground here no later than the OSU recommended dates (and often much earlier) don't have onions in the ground yet. As far as Fred and I know, I'm the only person who's planted onions already, and it is getting terribly late in southern OK to plant short-day types. This may be the first year I've ever had my onions in the ground before everyone else. I just keep an eye on my soil temperatures, my air temperatures and our 8-10 day forecast when making planting decisions. I won't plant if the soil is too cold for whatever it is I want to plant because seeds won't germinate and transplants won't grow while the soil is too cold. Our soil has been shockingly warm this week in the raised beds, which made planting beans and corn possible. I need to tackle the weeds growing in the mulch in the grade level areas because those areas are too wet to work so they haven't been touched since autumn and are growing a healthy crop of cool-season weeds. It is warm enough that 4 o'clocks, daturas and the dreaded bind weed are sprouting. Ugh. I hate bind weed. Today is so windy and cold that I may not go out to the garden at all except to harvest asparagus. I might spend tomorrow catching up on the weeding in the grade level soil if it is dry enough. It it is too wet and big clumps of soil come up with the weeds, I'll just have to wait another day or two for it to dry out more. I will tackle the clean-up of the back garden next week. It is all grade-level soil with no raised beds, so has been too muddy for me to venture into it at all. The perennials back there are up and growing well, though, so apparently the constant moisture hasn't bothered them. So, what's a gardener to do when they can't garden? Starting seeds indoors is about all that's left to do on a day like this.

Thanks for the smart points about rain, klem. And I agree -- there are just so many options, and people are so opinionated about those options, that it's hard to know what to do. My biggest concern remains the weather and how that will affect things, but I know that's a local issue. Maybe I should walk around the neighborhood and survey some people with porches about the sun and the temp, etc. Without adding any new information, my wife and I are divided on what to do -- she thinks just screening it is fine, but I think it would be really nice to have glass for the late fall / winter. If we had to decide today, I think we would either do simple / cheap modern storm windows (which could be opened to the screen on the bottom half during the summer) or do something a bit more adventurous. What I'm thinking on the adventurous front is to screen it in, but do it in a way where there's space to add the old-style wooden storm windows later -- just simple single-pane units that slide into the windo frames and attach with this: http://www.houseofantiquehardware.com/screen-hooks-storm-sash-window-hanger?sc=12&category=91 . The main thing would be attaching the screen on the inside of the frames, or at least creating an outside sill deep enough for the storm windows to nestle within it and still be flush on the outside. Then we could remove the storm windows and store them in the garage during the summer (though that wouldn't help with rainstorms you mention). Does that make any sense? If we did that, we could see how we like the screen in the spring and summer, but add the glass later in an affordable and removable fashion. I haven't seen many people try this, but I think we could build the storm frames and get the glass cut by a local shop. Basically we would recreate something like this company's product: http://chicagogreenwindows.com/storm-window-primer/