very pretty - I especially love the first one and of course the stump - thanks for sharing them.... Lynne

I am new here. I built a passive solar greenhouse from a plan I found in The Passive Solar Energy Book. All walls are solid except the south face. I poured an 18" high perimeter foundation, put in chicken wire, then large gravel, and bricked the center area. Under the shelves I placed water filled black barrels. I don't know how well this works as I have nothing to compare it to and I assume it depends on your individual climate. However, here, in the foothills of central California we get sun in the winter (T-shirt and jeans OK outside) though it gets cold as soon as the sun goes down. The GH is not finished and has openings at both ends where I plan to put in an exhaust fan and some intake louvers. Even with these unfinished openings it gets very hot. . .this month it was up to 115 degrees. I don't have the electricity ran to it yet, so leave the door open and can keep it between 90-95. I hooked up a weather sensor in the GH and have that linked to my computer and see that it rarely gets below 45 degrees at night even when it is about 30 degrees outside. Again, I am new to this and still learning what I need to know and cannot say how effective the heat sinks are. I plan to put in an exhaust fan, two intake vents (trying to decide whether to have motorized or gravity louvers for the intakes). I will put in a HAF fan system. . looking at one of those rectangle thermostatically controlled window fans with two small fans both reversible and with speed controls and set one one direction and one the other direction to get circular horizontal air flow - these used be about $40 at Lowes. I also had a spare 6" fan in a section of heating duct pipe so I installed that to duct runs to opposite corners of one side of the GH - about 6" up from the floor and then ran it up to a "T" in the center of one shelf and then and blow air into the center of the GH . . even when it is hot in the GH it is considerably cooler under the shelves - really amazingly so. Still experimenting. Everything I have planted has really grown rapidly even with a lot of heat an no fans as of now. At times in the winter it can get down to 20-25 degrees. . . this may happen a few times a season. I will have an electrical thermo controled heater to turn on when it gets that cold. Hopefully I won't ever need to heat it very often. I think my problems will be to keep it cool enough and air circulation.

Hi twolips... The struggle for me is that we seem to be routinely getting pretty dry summers now. We tend to get forecasts for a lot of days of 'scattered showers' with a 50% or less chance of rain predicted and two of the last three years, 90% of the showers seem to be missing us. I have a medical condition that creates energy issues and heat intolerance, which limits the amount of time I can spend outdoors in the hot months. We have been renovating the whole property for the past four years and trying to add a good amount of low maintenance plants, but they are not quite established yet. We also have a lot of neighbor silver maples...six of them around our property line that requires a lot of shade plants that are not always drought tolerant. I am adding as many epimediums and hellebores as I can afford every year, because they really tolerate those conditions well, but I have a long way to go. Add to that the way the trees suck the moisture from the soil and when we really get into a deficit, watering barely is a drop in the bucket. This year, I am already seeing the effects of not enough water in the garden and it's not even July yet. We used six yards of mulch last year and half that already this year. So, I would like to figure out what the best approach to keeping everything watered is. I have often heard..soaker hoses, but our pressure is low and it will only reach the end of one length of soaker hose. It would take a lot of connect/disconnect/connect to take care of the whole yard with soakers with just one at a time. Too many trips to the yard. I am falling back on the sprinkler, which is okay I guess, but, takes me six changes of position to do the back beds, two more for the lawn and two small beds and four raised veggie beds that need hand watering. The front requires another four sprinkler changes. Plus containers that need hand watering. I was just hoping for some ideas of anything different I can do to cut back on the watering chores and dragging the hose all over the yard. Thanks pm2

The sun shouldn't have killed any plants from seeds you sowed directly in the soil, unless the ground was very dry -farmers plant seeds in the open ground with no protection. Might have been slugs, cutworms or damping off fungus, although damping off doesn't usually occur in the open ground. You'll need to harden off the plants you purchase - expose them gradually to sun and the cold of night over a week or two. You start them with just a couple hours of morning sun, until you get them up to full sun. Some of your plants look like they have yellowing veins, which you might google on. Since it seems to occur in different kinds of plants, it's more likely to be a nutritional deficiency than a disease. But don't over fertilize. Your prepared bed looks great.