kevin nachman

That’s a cool video from Canada. I watched all her stuff. Yes the wood boiler is very important seems to be what heats the large pool. Those boilers are 6-12k plus installation then of course you need fuel for it in the form of logs, chips, or pellets. She said she spent 5k just for the epdm liner of the pool. That whole set up must be quite expensive but it’s fantastic at the same time. I noticed on her blog she grew “boring” things like lettuce and basil to sell directly to restaurants for 35 years. She said it gave her a healthy income sounds like citrus is her “retirement” project.

I did find a small scale commercial grower of yuzu in New Jersey. Selling direct to restaurants while consumers might not prefer it higher end restaurants do.

https://youtu.be/zwTc5929U5g

I do appreciate homegrown citrus when I lived in San Jose California I planted many varieties in my yard. It was always superior to store bought fruit. Now living in Georgia I knew I had to buy it from store to eat it. I’m surprised at the high quality citrus I’ve gotten at the major chains. Of course I’ve bought bad citrus there too it’s a crap shoot. I have best success buying only in winter citrus from California, Texas, Florida. I never buy it out of season from another country. I think you need to keep trying at the store, start with sumo mandarin they are in season now and always good.

If you go to growingfruit.org forum a guy named fruitnut has a greenhouse in Texas growing ultra high quality fruit, measuring brix, withholding water at right times, having greenhouse give the exact right chill hours. He can’t get anyone locally to buy it. They all want it for grocery store prices. He switched to propagation of fig trees/internet sales for money and just grows fruit for personal consumption.

You might want to contact local restaurants and see what they are interested in. Most want to purchase local these days. Micro greens, edible flowers would be easier and more profitable. If you can sell direct to restaurants you avoid wasting weekends staffing a booth at farmers market.

I understand your quest for the best citrus. I can’t eat cherries, preaches, plums, figs and many others because I distinctly remember the taste of my homegrown fruits and I’m always “chasing the original high” those fruits gave me.

Start with a small section and see what it takes to keep above freezing. Grow a few citrus for personal use/experimentation. As mentioned Meyer lemon and calmondin are highly productive varieties on a small plant

Sounds mainly like a pipe dream honestly. The things you want to grow aren’t necessarily what people want to buy. There is a glut of tomatoes and strawberries at the market because that is what people want. No way your citrus could compete with commodity citrus at the grocery stores it’s just too cheap to buy and only a select few are willing to pay extra for higher quality fruit. You won’t find many locally you’ll have to set up shop on internet.

East west is optimal for a passive solar greenhouse. I would section off a smaller part of the chickenhouse and convert that to experiment with and see if you can keep it above freezing before any large commitments happen.

Good luck on the project!

There’s a few Facebook groups for greenhouses ...much more traffic there

Thanks for the replies.
Latitude 34 degrees, north Georgia zone 7b, almost at top of hill heavy red clay soil. According to older maps frost line is 12 inches but I imagine that is rare or out of date, would guess a lot shallower now.

What sparked my interest was this post:
http://www.bananas.org/f2/my-semi-pit-banana-greenhouse-18518.html

He claims to have kept above freezing just going down a few feet.

I've seen some semi-buried greenhouse on youtube. Dig down 2-3 feet and you get a little bit of warmth radiated back from below grade soil.

At what width does this not work? I saw someone post a comment that wider than 15ft hold you wouldn't benefit much from below ground radiation. I hadn't thought about that before.

Any thoughts on this? I know some underground greenhouses (like ott kim) are wider than 15ft.

Very cool project. I would not say this is a failure but that you are in the middle of problem solving.

I haven't seen mentioned, is the roof just a single layer of poly? A double layer will make a big difference with heat retention. It can be down with a fan (electricity) or spacers.

You were talking about phase change materials. Coconut oil changes at 76 degrees. I've seen studies done in Asia where they are trying to use it to cool homes (in walls) or vehicles (oil put in roof). It would regulate the highs better and the phase change would kick in a temperate much more preferable to tropicals, keeping it near that temperature longer. Main problem I see with it is it's 1.40$ a pound to buy here in US. If you got direct ship from Asia (alibaba) it would be less I don't know how much.

I'm in the process of brainstorming my own greenhouse. We have many cloudy winter days here in north georgia. I believe instead of relying on sun to heat water I would heat the water with wood (which I can get free on my property).

Keep the updates coming!

Add more plants and you'll have more humidity!

You could heat the water like this:

https://www.ourfigs.com/forum/figs-home/227858-new-greenhouse-heater

You could make a collector like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXvrYNOZY04

But then you would need 1) a pump 2) a drainback system if you have freezing weather.

I'm thinking about both these systems for my DIY build, also digging down 2-3 ft for some "poor man's geothermal" and insulating the north wall. I'm in Georgia 7b.

Keep us posted on what you do.

Katherine Oconnor wrote:Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I have read so far Underground Greenhouse by Mike Oehler and Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman and I LOVED THEM! I can't wait to work through the list.

What would you say were the biggest "light bulb" moments for you reading these books?