Eric You might want to check out http://www.farmtekcatalog.com/intro.asp Know of people here in IA who have their greenhouses. I built my own but used materials purchased from them. Marv-Montezuma, IA http://community.webshots.com/user/vmwood Here is a link that might be useful: Farm Tek

7000ft, I am totally convinced you ought to write a book. Your family sounds very interesting and it sounds like you all work as a cooperative of sorts. How much of your food do you produce? The tomatoes that I grow are primarily for sauce, so I use Roma-type tomatoes. They are odd-looking, being long and quite large. The variety I grew this year was Super San Marzano. I've tried some others, but this one is the best. The sauce-type tomatoes are awesome for making sauce. They are very meaty with minimal juice and seeds. Making sauce is a breeze because you can skip the steps for squeezing the juice and seeds out. According to the catalogs, some varieties have pectin in them that helps to thicken the sauce. We ended up with 25 jars of sauce in the freezer. That is a record for us, so we are pleased! That's 25 dinners during ski season that I don't have to cook. :) I also grow a cherry tomato and some sandwich-type tomatoes. I've had good luck with Early Wonder, which is early yet tasty. (way better than early girl!) Inside the GH we enjoy our first tomatoes in mid-July. Without the GH we are lucky to get any red tomatoes at all. I'm sure it's the same for you. My gardening efforts are pretty much solo, but my husband was instrumental in building the GH and in helping look after things as needed. He is an expert at raising seedlings because I tend to travel a lot in the spring. He also built a root cellar and he is fully on board with our quest to grow as much food as possible. It's a bit of an oddball pursuit, so I'm happy that he's into it!

I suggest this site: http://tropiflora.com/shop.cfm Tillandsias are listed under Bromeliads on the list on the viewer's left-hand side. A lot of very interesting information. http://airplants4u.com/ has a lot of info and pictures, too. http://plantoddities.com/ is interesting and the manager helpful via email. When I started getting seriously into tillandsias, I collected a lot of information and pictures, and started making up my own digital book. It's a huge pdf now! Also upon getting orders, I would set up my camera and pose the plants with their name tags (or whatever form of ID came with the shipment) and a ruler (to help show the plant's size) and take pictures of them for future reference. That doesn't work very well with ionanthas since many of those all pretty much look alike in the long run, but it can be helpful with other plants.

I'm looking for information and sources for figs that can survive winters in zone 6b. They will be planted in an unheated greenhouse once they are old enough to plant in the ground. It normally doesn't get colder than 5 degrees and that only happens once or twice a year. Also is it good to root prune figs planted in the ground by cutting in a circle slightly larger than the mature tree once a year?