Wondering why we’re changing out the plastic roofs of our three main greenhouses? The benefits are actually twofold. By changing the roofs, with the help of a company like Cap City Restoration, we can help conserve energy. See the picture with the giant stack of wood below? We’ve chopped up some of the large trees that fell across our driveway during Hurricane Irene (We had about 30 trees across our driveway alone!) to use as fuel to heat our greenhouses this winter. To help our wood furnace heat the nursery more efficiently, we’re replacing the plastic that covers our greenhouses. In doing so, we’re adding new, sturdy plastic (similar to https://shrinkwrapcontainments.com/t-panda-premium.aspx) to prevent any holes from leaking heat out. That way it can stay nice and toasty warm inside without being too heavy. Additionally, we’re also creating an area of insulation to hold the heat in (when the summer months come around we will start thinking about getting some greenhouse fans to keep it cool and make sure it has proper airflow. This isn’t such a worry in the winter). We’ve used commercial blowers to fill the space between the inner and outer walls of the greenhouse with air. Once this space is filled it will create a pillow to help make a buffer against the cold and hold the heat in.
Heat is a huge concern for very obvious reasons. We winter over some of our plants, like Lemon Grass, which loves the heat. It thrives in zones 9-11 where it can get lots of sun. The new plastic and insulated walls will definitely help us to keep more cold-susceptible plants alive throughout the winter, so that we can offer you more mature plants, larger sizes and also have healthy specimen plants to make cuttings from in the Spring.
We’re also replacing the plastic on our roofs so that our plants can get more light. Especially after this past year’s weather (multiple snow storms, hurricanes, floods…even a freak earthquake!), the plastic had started to get pretty dingy. The yellowing of the plastic was filtering the sunlight and preventing more direct rays from getting in to the plants. After finishing one roof already, we can definitely see a huge difference in the amount of light inside the greenhouse. This will help prevent delays in crop availability, as we saw in a few cases this season due to Hurricane Irene and then Tropical Storm Lee. It kinda of gave a new meaning to the phrase, “when it rains, it pours” for us here in zone 7!
This is our newest member of The Growers Exchange, Brandon, helping us prep the roof for new plastic.