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Hi guys I am very new to this and just need a bit of clarity please. This is the first year I have had a proper greenhouse and I was bought a new parafin heater for xmas to go with it. I have started off some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons and a few other bits inside my house. I have now pricked them them out and they are taking up much more space. I thought I would be able to put these in the greenhouse stick the heater on and they would just continue to grow. I also thought I would be able to start most things off in there with the heater but reading another thread it seems far more technical than that. I am not really sure when I should be using the heater and how. I have kept everything indoors for now.
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This is my first year with a GH too.
My understanding is you could use you heater in two ways: 1. Frost Protection 2. To heat the GH.
Frost protection is relatively simple. If you think its gonna be cold you light up the heater and leave it trickling heat overnight to keep the GH warm enough it doesn't freeze the little blighters. The hardest part is knowing when its going to be frosty.
The heating is a bit more complex! I've had days when my GH has been over 20C already just from sun. You wouldn't want to be heating then. I've had days when its been 0C when I should have had frost protection if I had anything vulnerable in. If you were on electric heat you can set a thermostat and ignore it. As you are on paraffin its much more complex.
It'll also cost a fortune to heat a GH to 18C which seems to be the target temp if you are heating! GH's are badly insulated, have a huge door that you connect straight to the outside world when you open it to check on plants etc. And paraffin is very expensive as a heat source anyway!
Toms, Peppers & Cuc's (and I'd guess Melons too) stop growing if the temp falls below about 18C (hence the magic number. Certainly down at 12-15C they just kind of hibernate. They get annoyed if it falls much below that overnight. I think they will assume winter is here and they shouldn't be growing. From what I've read a tom that is chilled will take longer to recover than one that is started fresh!
It will depend a bit on varieties. I expect if you have varieties that can be outdoor planted they will be a bit more tolerant. But they still want daytime temps in the high teens...
The frost protection stuff is for hardier plants that the seedlings need a bit of protection with. Probably the kind of stuff you'd be sowing now or next month and planting out in May when frost risk has passed. The advantage of doing them now rather than January is the number of frosts is hopefully less so less paraffin needed!
While the greenhouse is protecting the seedlings that are going outside your house window sills are growing on the warmer stuff... -
Hi Sprouter thank you for that. I think I have perhaps been a bit impatient this year thinking the greenhouse will do more than it should. Not to worry I will keep indoors the really vulnerable ones and like you say use it more for frost protection over the next two or three months for items that can be sown in the greenhouse but are a bit less sensitive than the peppers etc.Comment
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