In a typical year, I am taking plant orders by February for
the upcoming growing season through my Pre-Season Prep service. This year, and
hopefully for 2016 only, my timeline has changed a bit. I am waiting until
early April to send out order forms, although I still plan to have summer crops
ready for your gardens around Mother's Day.
There's a good reason for this delay—I am still in the midst
of completing an array of projects that M R Gardens undertook in 2015 when the
farm expanded to 2.5+ acres. The biggest of them—a passive solar greenhouse.
This greenhouse is a much more involved project than the
typical aluminum frame hoop house with poly rolled over it. The
800-square-foot greenhouse is designed to limit the amount of non-renewable
resources used to heat and cool it. It collects the largest amount of heat
during the coldest days of the year and stores that heat in thermal mass for it
to be released at night. When the sun is high in the sky during the warmest
days of the year, less direct sunlight enters the greenhouse and vents open to
cool it.
While passive solar greenhouses have been around since the 1960's, they are still few and far between and a bit experimental, especially at this scale. Every locality and every site are different, making the needs for each greenhouse unique. As I see how the temperature
fluctuates in this greenhouse during the next few months, I can make adjustments for optimum performance.
I look forward to sharing more details about this design in
the future. Check back for announcements about tours. I am also looking for volunteers to help me put the finishing touches on the greenhouse—so contact
me if that interests you.
