Straw Bale Cold Frame zone 6b?
 

I've been trying to set up a small greenhouse for several years, I have limited success. A friend who works for the city brought me the bales of straw used for the Halloween celebration. Since the latest windstorm destroyed my latest attempt, I decided to cover the straw with the remains of the plastic cover.

My question: Assuming the usual winter weather,
[LIST=1][*]Occasional snowfall lasting days at most.[*]Nights falling below freezing with extremes around 0°F.[*]4 weeks or more of days below freezing.[/LIST]what does anyone think my chances of overwintering tomato cuttings and other delicate perennials?

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Just a model, still trying to see what I can do. Screen doors were my first idea.

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This should give everyone a better idea what the structure is like.

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This small structure has around 80 gallons of water to help sink the heat.

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No surprise, I pull the plastic back, and here is Mischief. I often open closet doors 12 hours after opening them to find her staring at me satisfied at her joke. I don't know how she got in here either.

If you build it, cats will come....

LoL @ the cat!

So for your question.......maybe. I think you'll be alright on your temps. Not sure though how you'll keep mice and other critters out of the structure. Maybe the cat will help you out there!

I think I might stack the straw one bale high in the front and 2 bales high in the back so it's lower to the ground and will keep your heat closer to the plants. Put your short side facing south and your taller side facing north. And I'd go 2 bales thickness instead of one on the north side stacking your bales 2 thick on row 1 and then turning the bales on row 2 the opposite way. Might put a couple of black buckets full of water in there too to help heat it at night.

I am horrible at explaining things but I have it pictured in my head just right ;)

Actually Barbee, I think I can visualize what you're getting at. I think what you mean is the bales in front laying wide side down, the bales on the second tier laying thin side down. Low side is facing the Southwest. The bales are actually pretty rotten, wet, and in some growing grass. I don't expect this to last long enough to get rodentia.

The cuttings and plants close to the front are somewhat in the shade, but so far are still getting light. Right now I just want them to stay alive, go dormant when it gets chilly, and be ready to plant when it warms.

One possibility is to replace the bales in front with the old glass out in the barn! Barrel stays though, it has my goldfish in it.

Yep that's what I meant. That's how we stack it in the barn and it makes it less apt to lean or fall over. It can be leaning pretty good and not fall over if stacked this way LoL

Will you use the straw as mulch next spring?

Nope! I raise worms for the poop. I will probably turn all that into compost, the reason my friend thought of me in the first place. I will then feed the compost to the worms after it goes beyond the "hot" stage.

I went out today and revised the structure a little. Dug out more glass from the barn and stacked the stuff up. It's actually starting to look like a cold frame! I don't see any problems with the glass being perched the way it is, but I think I'm going to need to extend the plastic down where I can weigh it on the ground.

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Extended the glass down the front and rearranged the bales to give me more inside room.

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I also perched glass on the top to make a sort of ceiling, This is vital, past experience has shown me that rain will run off until you aren't looking. In that case, the score Rain 5, Greenhouse 0.

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The glass is held upright by old electric fencposts driven in the ground just under the height of the glass.

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The rest of the structure is simply old half rotten bales of hay stacked up. Here's hoping for enough heat!

It looks really good!
I'd love to raise worms someday. 2 or 3 years ago I bought some worm poop (1 1/2 Tons) and the guy's set up was amazing.

Are those windows secured at all? If they are just laying there, eventually a strong wind will pick them up and turn them into flying glass bombs.

You can use nylon straps or rope with ground anchors, or make a wooden frame onto which you can screw down the windows.

I always wonder how much I would charge for a ton. I sell it at .50/liter. That is around, depending on the moisture, 1lb, 1oz, and some change. Everyone tells me I should charge more, but I think that's the right price.

Cole_Robbie, the glass is simply perched on some scrap 1x4's. I'm still in the R&D stage with these models, and should this do a good or better job than the tunnel I built last year (You can see the skeleton in the background in the second photo below), I would prefer to make a bale structure and develop a passive heating system.

I'm not worried about wind pulling the glass off, because it's covered with 4 mil plastic film. The glass is there to keep rain from puddling in the plastic and ruining my work. I've learned that lesson the hard way, having a greenhouse I kludged from plastic and bamboo. I went to work, came home to find everything crushed after the rain collected in between the "rafters."

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The plastic is held down by all the weight I can put on it. You're right about the wind, I have had to place the cap on the grain bin you can see in the background of these photos after one gust pulled it off, somehow.

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The other side. The trees in the pots are my Apple grafts, on the far right, the rootstocks.

Hello CapnChKn

If you can get horse manure, I have a solution for you

See my post "warm layer"

Patrix ;-)

Hey Patrix!

So far this winter has been really warm. Our outside temps at 9 this morning are 66°F (19
°C). Still we have months to go, and this is uncommon here in TN. Funny thing, when I talk with my friends in Florida everyone thought it was snowing in October. The temperatures should drop below freezing in the last part of the year.

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I don't have ready access to large quantities of manure, but I do have lots of organic material that needs to be composted. My only problem is getting enough nitrogenous matter to bring the temperatures up.

Since I'm trying to keep the plants from freezing, instead of trying to get fruit. I'm actually trying to keep the plants warm enough they don't freeze, and cool enough they don't grow. When the temperatures warm up, I'll set them in beds.

I've cobbled together another piece on the structure, still experimental models. I dug a door out of the woods here and set it as the back wall. It looks like a hovel in a refugee camp, but right now...

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I've gathered all the green material I can to get the temperature up in the compost heap I've built on the back wall to give it a "hot spot." Right now I checked to find the temp in the pile at 150°F (66
°C). If it gets down to the "block of ice in the water dish" stage, I may put a fan in there to push the warm air forward.

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:yes:Some people may look at that and see redneck engineering. I look at that and see the genius who built something beautiful and functional with what they had available!

Well, Thank you Redbaron! I appreciate the sentiment!

We'll have to see whether I'm a genius or not though (I'm not). I can't say how many times I've ignored something that should be obvious.

When I was a kid this would have been called "making do". Now we know how using what we have is brilliant. I think it's awesome !

[QUOTE=Redbaron;313754]Some people may look at that and see redneck engineering. I look at that and see the genius who built something beautiful and functional with what they had available![/QUOTE]

Amen to that, RedBaron. Nothing like a good Jury-Rig.

Hotwired
[SIZE=1][I]An Engineer with a Garden is a Dangerous Thing[/I][/SIZE]

[QUOTE=CapnChkn;309233]I would prefer to make a bale structure and develop a passive heating system.[/QUOTE]

What're you thinking about doing as far as passive heat?

[QUOTE]What're you thinking about doing as far as passive heat? [/QUOTE]I've been playing around with a few ideas.

Solar collectors with tubing running through them and banking the heat in insulated water tanks seems like a good idea, as the sun only heats during the day. Tubing running just under the wall would then warm the interior by radiating that heat, running the water through that tubing. I.E. during the day, the water would be run to collectors storing that heat in tanks, during the night or on cold days, through the walls to radiate into the interior.

[URL="http://inventorspot.com/sodacan_solar_furnace"]Solar collectors that have tubes made from cans[/URL] and painted black can create a lot of good heat. A fan blowing air from the interior and the return close to the floor. This will only heat during the day.

I'm finding a pile of leaves will heat up to 140°F (60°C), unless I've added nitrogen by adding the old compost to them. If I put a heap inside the structure, the heat should stay inside as well as carbon dioxide.

Not really passive, but building a thermal mass heater could keep the whole thing warm on really cold nights. Heating a chunk of stone, sand, and clay should act to radiate heat into the interior. That takes a firing chamber, chunks of wood, and turbulence to mix oxygen with the hot "cracked" gases.

Here are a few links I had saved from my own research into the subject. I think using solar energy to heat water is a great idea. You can also move water uphill without electricity.

[URL]http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/PEXColDHW/Overview.htm#Overview[/URL]

[URL]http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimental/PEXCollector/Construction.htm[/URL]

I use a lot of passive heat to keep my delicate plants like peppers and eggplants alive in the wintertime. I plant them near large amounts of concrete and brick, like the house, knowing that I want them to survive through winter. Then, just some blankets and at worst, Christmas lights and fans, I've kept them alive through the nights down to 22 degrees. I always water well if it's going to be cold, too.

I have a passive solar water heater on my roof. If you are considering solar
heated water for heat, I suggest reading up on "thermosyphon" as it eliminates
water pumps and any moving parts. Unfortunately for me, my geography doesn't
work out for thermosyphon for my hoophouses. The concept is simple: hot water
rises, so the collectors have to be lower than your storage unit which then
displaces the coldest water in your storage. It requires a pressure relief valve in
that the sun can heat the water to a boiling point.

Thank you everybody! This greenhouse is still in the "find a place to put it" stage. Now is the time to see what to do about heat though.

Tennessee has long stretches of cloudy weather in the winter. We might not see the sun for weeks at a time. I have managed to get heat up to around 180°F (82°C) in January when the sun is shining, with a cardboard box and some plate glass.

I've been out watering, removing dead leaves, fretting over aphids, and the wall is really warm to the touch. Something like a bath. If it weren't for the fact I need to stir the compost every so often to keep the oxygen up, I could run the tubing through the heap.

Well, the first experiment is over. It certainly works as a cold frame. Over the winter, I lost around 75% of everything I put in there. Super Beefsteak tomato cuttings survived fairly well. The potted eggplants are still kicking, though I lost one and all the cuttings.

I might have done better if I hadn't forgotten to cover them one night it dropped below freezing. I killed 50% that night. Pepper cuttings ended up coming inside to take up some residence in the lighted grow box, and any seedlings I put out there died fairly quickly.

The compost heated wall and barrels of water worked until the compost finished, and this is when I discover spring is probably the coldest part of the year for them with the wind and all. I never got the pile to heat again satisfactorily.

Now it's swarming season for the bees here, I've been concentrating on them and the raised beds are sitting idle. Still waiting for the carrots to come up, and still covering the plants, they seem to be doing better. Brandywine, Cherokee purple, Sorrento, and Costoluto Genovese seemed to make it alright in the chill. Rutgers, Yellow Pear, and Mortgage Lifter died badly.

One real problem with my Kludge. To get to the plants I have to take it apart and crawl around on my knees to take care of anything. Of course the compost would have been good heat if it didn't cut out at the wrong time and in a nod to Patrix, I think bottom heat would have been better.

On the plus side, it stood up to the winds rill gud. One reason why I don't have anything but the skeleton of a hoop house here, the wind just rips the plastic away. I've never been able to resolve that problem.

I'll try to get photos set up, I've got frames to build, swarm traps to set out, feeding to keep up, and boxes to build for the hives soon to be bursting with new golden babies. No queen cells here in Middle TN yet, but I have frames solid with brood from one end to the other. That's a warm fuzzy feeling, kind of like when the newbees land on you to see what they smell, and get a little taste. They don't bite until they develop teeth...

Ha ha enjoyed the Jury-Rig "making-do" comments. Not about gardening, but my F-I-L always thought Vasoline was the fix for just about anything from a burn to a "splinter drawer-outter" to any scratch or scrap of the skin! Had he been a gardener, heaven only knows what he would use it for.