It's a big adventure, especially to one who does not have any gardening experience to help guide your desires, tempered by your knowledge and abilities. It's all best gained by doing it firsthand. The first steps are always just a big pile of questions and mysterious natural and technical processes. The best hobbies are those that seem outwardly simple, but have layers of complexity one can grow into. Gardening fits this premise very well. Perhaps ask your neighbor what their thoughts are. Sounds like your retiree friend may be providing a lot of the sweat equity, at the least their broader experience, unless you are out there shoulder to shoulder, sharing the work load and learning as you go. If their plot is small now, are they willing and up to the task of attending to a large space devoted to a multitude of "new" plants they are not currently growing? Does this person have any gh experience? Actually, the large greenhouse you're dreaming of could keep three or more people busy. Especially with such "exotic" plants (for a gh) as you're contemplating. For your circumstances, I'd also suggest starting smaller. By all means choose a high roof, it does help stabilize temps a bit. Try all sorts of things, but keep it simple, too. Later on, the first gh could become a tropical space, a potting/starting area, or devoted to some more specific use while you add a larger greenhouse that utilizes what you learned in that first, smaller space. If I were a bug, I'd head straight to that shady area in your pic. Lots of shade, good understory (small plants to cling to and breed in) and plenty of moisture. Bug heaven! Your gh choice probably has plenty of gaps, but a sealed up gh is just heaven for molds and fungus to invade. That'll be harder to control than anything if not dealt with by proper moisture control. For bugs, you'd need to screen all openings and plug the gaps, which decreases air transfer a bit as well. So, it's all a trade-off of one thing for another. Fortunately, if you can afford it, the liberal application of money can address most of the issues, lol! Seriously, many problems can also be dealt with by addressing them early and it doesn't always take a ton of money if you're willing to be creative, fabricate and scrounge a bit. I made a temperature controlled air exchanger from a couple cheap box fans, an old aquarium thermometer, a relay and a model train transformer! Looks odd, but works great! You will probably see bugs no matter what. I usually don't have a large problem with bugs, but more than once, an infestation required I sacrifice the plant or plants, as all the bugs were on them en masse and it was easier to just remove the entire plant very carefully and more or less be done with it. I have a few uninvited dinner guests this season, but so far, it's pretty minor. Keeping mulch in place and picking off the dead leaves and keeping it clean helps greatly. The larger or more gh's you have, though, the greater the area to patrol, clean and treat for problems. But, presumably, the larger space would let you have room to grow things yet get around them from all sides. Still, it can become a chore, even a job, if you over-plan and bite off more than you and your helper can tackle. One week unattended, you can find disease, bugs, dried out plants, overgrowth with plants flopping over, equipment problems, you name it, any or all suddenly taking over. It's not like model ship building, where you can park it for weeks or months. Once committed, you are in for the long haul. Sometimes I think I should be committed! ;) I also wonder about debris from all those trees falling on the gh. An arched roof is strong, but a heavy branch could penetrate or even something minor like bird droppings might become a nuisance if those trees were also nesting sites. Better to move the gh more into the yard and add cooling and shade cloths. The money you save on the purchase of a smaller gh can be put into the utility bill. Generally, a gh will amplify certain things and temper others. Overcrowding, lack of air movement or heat and moisture control can run rampant in a gh, yet be milder in their effects outdoors. On the other hand, nasty weather, cold snaps, rainy drenches or dry spells are more easily dealt with, and the heat problem can be conquered. You can control the bugs for the most part. Manual pollination of flowers is fun when there's only one or three a day, but I don't think I'd relish having surrogate sex with an entire tree full of blossoms! Somethings like peppers, tomatoes or even squashes it's faily easy, but for cucumbers, it can become an exercise in futility. God made bees for a reason, after all! I'd love to have a 700+ square foot gh. That's about 7 times the space I have now. I have 6 seasons experience to help tell me what's required, but I'm really just a newbie myself, still experiencing new things every season. I imagine you could start with a space that large, but not try to fill it all right away and sort of grow into it season by season. Every yard, every situation is different. You won't really know what you need till you get one up and start growing your own stuff. Don't overload and take it into the "job" category, and it should be a ton of fun and healthful foods for you and your friend! -Ed

going with all pole beans again this year. new for me this year are maria amazilitei mennonite purple stripe tobacco worm mr tungs annettes italian or auntie vi north carolina speckled long greasy cutshort tennessee greasy back again are grandmas black grandmas brown grandma ginas meraviglia di venezia neckargold blue marbutt a red eye greasy bean from a tennessee lady uncle steve italian uncle steve red i may have to get creative to grow everything on this years list. peas sugar snap oregon sugar pod aldermans the uncle steve red is a variety i thought i lost for good after several years of failure in the U.P. it got resurrected from some old old seeds that i planted to see what would happen. i got about 5 or 6 seeds from a plant that grew. i finally had a successful grow out last year here in the bean belt of michigan in the thumb area. it is ok as a snap bean if picked early. it may be a good shelly or dry bean. i have never had enough seed to try them that way. i have tried a few raw out of the pod, and they tasted pretty good. keith

Karo, I love Green Zebra, and would suggest you give Aunt Ruby's German Green a try one of these days. It has a superb flavor. The clue that helps you figure out when to pick green-when-ripe tomatoes is that they change from the hardness of unripe tomatoes to the softness of ripe ones. It doesn't take much "squeezing" to master knowing how soft is soft enough, and after that, you could pick your tomatoes blindfolded merely by touch. Also, and this is different with each variety, but some GWR \ tomatoes turn either an amber color or a blushing pink color as they mature. On some fruit it is only on the blossom end of the fruit. When you start growing black ones, just remember that they each have their own sort of odd purplish-maroonish-blackish look as they mature, but the squeeze test will never fail you. Some blacks have green shoulders that persist even when the fruit is ripe too. I have about a dozen black types on my list for this year, and it is more than that if I list all my purples/blacks/browns together. I'm not sorry either. Their flavor is out of the this world! Pink, purple, black and brown tomatoes are my favorites and I grow tons of them every year. This year after I looked at all the tomatoes on my 2015 Grow List and then listed them in groups (Yellow, Orange, Black, Pink, Purple, etc.), I barely had any red ones at all so I had to force myself to go back and rework the list and add some reds. To me, each variety of a good, well-grown, tasty tomato picked at its peak ripeness is as unique as a fine vintage wine, and it is easy to forget to grow red ones because I choose based on flavor and productivity more than anything else. It isn't that there aren't some great red tomatoes, but just that I already had grown them forever before I started growing heirlooms of different colors, so with the red ones I kinda have a "been there, done that" type attitude at times. We prefer the flavor of "Ildi" to "Yellow Pear",but I grew Yellow Pear for years and years because my husband's boss (now retired) loved them. Now I can just grow Ildi for us. I have tried to cut back on how many different varieties I grow each year, and not very successfully. There's just so many good ones. I canned over 200 pints of Annie's Salsa last year (we give away a lot of it as Christmas gifts) and, while some of them were made purely of paste tomatoes, I also make them from all varieties of tomatoes mixed together. I have a machine that peels the tomatoes and de-seeds them, so mixing together a bunch of different shapes, sizes and colors is as easy as it can be and they give you a superb flavor. (Granted, the flavor is more obvious in pasta sauce or pizza sauce because in salsa, the over-riding flavor is from the peppers, onions, garlic, seasonings and spices.) I never met a tomato I didn't like, except for those pathetic things the grocery stores try to pass off as tomatoes. When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, you still could get tomatoes with great flavor and texture right there in grocery stores (though my dad generally grew ours every summer) but you cannot find good tomatoes in a grocery store any more. I preserve our tomatoes a lot of different ways so we have them to tide us over during the non-gardening season. Dawn

frdnicholas - You will get much more expert advice than mine from some other folks here, as also being a relatively new Albuquerquean, I have been amazed at the knowledge of some folks on this board local to this area. At any event, you asked about what zone # we are in. And truly, the best way I think I can explain what I have learned regarding zones in Albuquerque is that really, you have to realize that it is more prudent to consider the city in thoughts of two zones, rather than just one. If you live in a valley area - North or South Valley or Corrales area, etc. (anything lower and near the Rio Grande) - or, in the Foothills area from Juan Tabo or especially Tramway east, you probably would be most prudent to consider yourself in a zone 6 or 6b area (maybe 7-like on more mild years)...nightimes in the Valley areas or in the Foothills can get significantly colder than in the other parts of the city. (Should note though, that while Valley temps are colder at night, they typically do get a bit hotter in the daytime as well). However, if you are in the Heights areas of Albuquerque, or on the West Side, you can more consider yourself in a solid zone 7b area. Again, more mild years in this area bump it more at selected times to more of a zone 8a, and there are thermal belt areas such as by UNM that are more common to an 8a annually. But probably a safe, general rule would be a 6 or 6b in the Valley, and a 7b in the Heights or West Side. As for vegetables to plant, again, other folks on here will give you much more solid info, however, I do know that tomatoes and peppers (2 of the 4 you mentioned) do generally do very well in Albuquerque. (A somewhat unrelated side-note...I live in the NE Heights and have a Georgia peach tree, and already as of last week - not even March yet - it is budding its blossoms extensively...with proper care, you will enjoy growing things here!)... Best of success!