I'm just a novice but happy with my small successes this year. I warmed up soil with plastic. My husband made a short low tunnel covered with Agribon 19 (or 15) for my experiment this year. Here in NH it only takes one night of low temps to destroy a planting and typically we seem to have just one night and then a run of warmer nights. I lost a promising bean planting one year. Lots of blossoms and then one cold night the third weekend in september. I have to be away during prime planting season so this year I experimented with the tunnel. It was just big enough to cover three close rows. Bush beans, a filet variety, were planted in early May. We then got a period of cold and rain. I heard beans just didn't germinate. Mine did! A late planting of beans this year was also protected by the tunnel. We were picking beans up until it snowed on Oct 30. We did not care for the taste of a wax bean but I think it's the variety not the cold. The green bean, again a filet type, were superb. The tunnel suffered damage during the snow so I'm not sure if any bean plants survived. Pay attention to varieties. I also picked unprotected lettuce on Oct 29. It will be interesting to see if any survived the 12" of snow. Next year we plan a high tunnel covered with plastic. My goal is fresh bush beans until Thanksgiving. A friend of a friend who uses plastic low tunnels and starts plants indoors is eating zucchini in early June when my plants are just getting established. I think he easily gains a month here in NH. Many people around here consider Memorial Day weekend to be the safe planting date for warm weather plants. I don't agree. I have a sweet spot on the south side of our house, a narrow bed against a white house. We picked peppers when frost was predicted but left some small ones on the plants. The plants didn't get touched by frost until Oct 29. I use a calendar on Johnny's Seeds website as a guide. Also, we visited a neighbor with an unheated greenhouse who has greens all winter. Make sure you pay attention to the last planting date because plants stop growing during the short days. From what I gathered at my first NOFA conference this year, if you didn't get things planted by mid-Sept, they didn't germinate and grow enough before they stopped growing for the year until the days get long enough again. Best wishes. Here is a link that might be useful: Johnny's Seeds guide

Thank you Chris and Steve for your help! I think this will be my plan for the winter: 4 ft 4 bulb t5 HO with 54 watts and 5000 lumens per bulb. These bulbs are all 6400k. Will I be able to replace one of the 6400k bulbs in the light fixture with a 2700k? I will get some mylar to put on the lower walls to use as a reflector. I will use a small fan for circulation and help prevent bugs. I will keep my trees on a tray of pebbles that has water in it for humidity, looking for about 45-50% humidity. I will keep the area around 60 degrees, or should it be higher? I'm still a little fuzzy on watering and fertilizing. I guess I will water them a little less often and perhaps cut down on fertilizing too? I also need to research preventative bug control, maybe a routine neem oil spray or safer soap spray? And, I need to figure out if/how I should be acclimating my trees to the inside conditions. Any ideas? One question about lighting. From what I understand light dissipates the farther away it goes so my trees need to be close enough to get good benefit without getting burned. My question is why does it matter what size room the trees are in? Please correct my plan as needed. Thanks so much!! I've really been stressing this. Still stressing, just not so bad.

Rebecca, It can be pretty confusing, but I though Debra, and the article she linked, both gave great explanations. The situation is further complicated, though, by what part of the country you live in and by how intense the summer sunlight is and by how hot the temperatures get. The same plants that would tolerate full sun from sunrise to sunset in July in Pittsburgh, Pennsylavania, for exmple, would not necessarily be happy with the same conditions here. Because our sunlight is so intense and our summer heat is also intense as well, plants here often do well in less sun than you'd expect. FULL SUN: Full sun is direct, unfiltered sun with a total absence of shade for at least six hours a day. It can mean direct sun from sunrise to sunset but some so-called full sun plants will struggle in true all-day-long full sun in our climate and are happier if they get some shade. About the only plants I've grown that are happy in full sun with little to no irrigation are gomphrena (aka globe amaranth), portulaca and purslane. In a drought year, they may not survive but they'll outlast everything else. Examples of plants that tolerate full sun in our climate most of the time, and sometimes need irrigation, include coneflowers, rudbeckias, zinnias, coreopsis, heliopsis, angelonia, and some salvias. Honestly though, in my yard, even these flowers are happier if they have a little shade during the hottest part of the day. In some cooler climates, flowers like pansies, violas, and diascia can take full sun all day long, but not here in the hot months. The time of year does have an effect, especially on flowering annuals and perennials....full sun in March is different from full sun in May and full sun in July is different from both of them in terms of how it affects the plants. PARTIAL SUN/PARTIAL SHADE: These two are often used interchangeably. Partial Shade usually means the area gets no more than 4 to 6 hours of direct, full sun daily. Plants that need partial shade are usually happier if they get their sun early in the day or late in the day but are shaded in the middle of the day. Partial Sun usually means the area gets at least 4 hours of direct sun and 6 is better. Plants that need partial sun also do better if the sun is not mid-day sun, but they can tolerate mid-day sun better than plants that need partial shade. See...it is a very subtle distinction. FULL SHADE: An area is considered full shade if it gets less than 4 hours of direct sunlight per day, so these areas have very little direct sun and full shade plants can tolerate early morning/early evening sun but not mid-day sun. Full shade plants are usually happy in dappled shade too. Buildings or fences, for example, can cause full shade that is not dappled. Full shade doesn't mean it is a dark area though, just not a sunny one. All plants need to have some light, even if it is only filtered light. DAPPLED SHADE: These are areas that have a mixture of sun and shade, generally because of nearby deciduous trees. Dappled shade is very similar to partial shade but dappled shade plants do best with very little if any direct sun. When we think of dappled shade plants we think of woodland type plants like wild bloodroot, wild violets or Jack-in-the-pulpit. HEAVY SHADE: This is as close as you will get to an absence of light. I think of heavy shade as the type of dense shade you get if you are walking through a conifer forest. You will see very little dappled light....just shade, shade, shade. We have an area of heavy shade at the back of our property that consists of very old, very mature Eastern Red Cedars that vary in heigh from about 35 or 40 feet in height to about 60 feet or taller. It is so dark under those trees that virtually nothing grows in the shade under those trees. If you have that kind of a heavy shade area, you really cannot plant anything much under it. In applying the above to your specific landscape as defined in your original post, I'd say that your shady area between the house and fence is full shade, put probably not heavy shade. Your area that gets sun from noon until sunset (if I remember correctly) is full sun if it gets at least six hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight. There are plants for every type of lighting except for heavy shade, and there's some that do OK in some types of heavy shade, but if you have heavy shade you have to experiment to see whether anything can grow in the type of heavy shade if you have it. Most folks who live in/landscape in heavy shade have lots of mulch, or prune up the tree branches quite high above the ground to try to turn their heavy shade into full shade or dappled shade. I've linked a brief article below that I think describes the difference in sun, shade, etc., pretty well in as few words as possible. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Sun/Shade

I live in a contemporary farmhouse. My house is largely open floorplan. The entryway is open to my kitchen on the left, but the kitchen is open to the dining room and you can see all the light fixtures from the entrance. For my space, the same or similar finishes plus the same feeling works well. My finishes vary from matte black, to antiqued silver(which is basically black with silver undertone), to raw steel(which again reads black/silvery). All the lights (except the front hall sconce which will be replaced this year) have a older, farmhouse, rustic feel, leaning toward industrial. If possible I would put a semiflushmount and 1 or 2 sconces in your entryway. I think an entry way should be bright and welcoming. Why don't you post a picture of your dining room light and request help finding a coordinating fixture?