Swamp cooling information below. The solar cover is hard to say, At least a factor of 2 to 3. Depends on how much sun you get during the day and what kind of heat storage you have. Ex. -water barrels, rock, gravel or brick floor. Double or triple panels or single layer glass as I have. If you read my page you will see I use very little heat and I am in a colder zone. I have bananas and elephant ears and lots of different gingers (which needs to go dormant to bloom). I had kept my temps between 45-47 but it got to 35 a few times with no harm. I have lowered my temps to below 45. Zone 9 should be no problem to heat to keep above freezing. Things still grow and my callas love the cool temps and bloom in Jan. MY blue sky vine also blooms in the winter. Cooling is your biggest concern. A smaller greenhouse is harder to cool than a larger one. But easier to heat. I can only keep my summer temp 10 degrees above outside temps with what I have now. So a few days it hit close to 110* in between misting times. Our humidity stays between 80-90 most days. That makes it harder to cool. I am 10 miles from Lake Lanier, our main watershed. If you have heard the news this is the worst drought ever for Georgia. So I cut back on watering as much as possible. Here is a link that might be useful: Swamp cooler

Brute, You can start with purslane. It grows wild in almost every yard that isn't saturated with chemicals. And it has important food value you can't get with most plants, Omega-3s, for example. I've got it in my yard, and have put it in stir-fry, for the food value, and for the fun of actually eating a weed - free food and oh, how sustainable. It doesn't collapse into mush in stirfry like greens tend to if you aren't incredibly careful, so it's much better in my stirfry than the greens I grow. I've always wondered about all my mushrooms, but I have too many friends with stories of their misspent youth raiding cowpies for the magic type... so I refrain. Would be neat to learn if any are actually edible. And I bet if you leave off the chemicals, and your neighbors do too, the snails would be a good source of protein. Heck, the French love them. As does my puppy. But I'm not up to that yet. Anyone actually know how to cook escargot? Susannah

Those pencil boxes are the best! I use so many that I may have to use my P=Touch labeler to tag them. I use for portable projects like grandmothers garden english paper piecing, yo-yo making box, for the "tools" to my serger and embroidery machine, my "hand sewing" kit, and I even keep pencils in one. lol I lucked out last year and found one that is 12" long and 8" wide, use it for all my bobbins. It holds two of those round rubber bobbin holders. Gonna look for another one of that size. Very handy!

I love gardening. I like to propagate plants, and I, too, have a compost pile. You're right, Carol, they are fun! I also read voraciously and am in a book group that's fun. I love to "antique" although I don't buy much any more. I love to travel. I spend a lot of time w/ grandchildren, but that's not a hobby, it's a life style!! And of course, I spend more hours a day than I'd like to admit on this computer.