Looks like the one I use in the plant room for getting the seeds started. No heat just sunshine hitting it late afternoon before it gets cold at night. But I agree about the venting of it on warm afternoons.
Will work fine for your plants on the deck until you get them in the ground

Everything has overgrown it's pot, needs potted up... but I have no place left to put them inside.

Mostly I just need spring. Low tonight 21°. It's a whole different world when you're gardening this far north and in an especially cold year. Even in that little greenhouse, it would be too cold for most of my plants. Nothing has been hardened off because weather hasn't permitted it. I figure now that I've bought the little greenhouse summer will suddenly arrive.

My fear isn't that I'll fry stuff in the greenhouse, it's that the flimsy thing will blow away in our midwest winds, and my plants will fly with it. I bought some rope to tie it to the deck rail, and I might try to zip tie it to the deck floor boards.

Karen

Sounds like we all need spring.
My light shelves are full and the windows too.
Here is my list of tomato sown today:

Azoychka
Celebrity
Dancing with Smurfs
Danko
Lime Green Salad
Super Fantastic

Black Cherry
Chadwick's Cherry
Indigo Rose
Lyana
Mandarin Orange
Sophie's Choice

Just sown today, no sprouts.

Yesterday I potted up some that had germinated, and today I set up two more varieties. My germination batches are much smaller this year...the control thing is working well so far! I'm enjoying the tasks much, much more with the slower pace.

Almost all of my herbs have sprouted (about 200 plants). They need to be outdoors by mid-April or I will be in serious trouble!!! Hopefully the thyme, sage and parsley can take the colder temps so I can keep the basil, peppers and tomatoes under the lights.

Carolyn--Dancing with Smurfs? That sounds so fun......what type of tomato is that?

Karen, I think you'll be fine if you tie down your green house. I bought a cheapo cold frame from Menards 2 years ago. It worked well enough that I bought another one last year. This year has been so cold, and with lack of sun that I think I'll have to bring my mints in from the coldframe and put them under the lights to get them growing so I can start taking cuttings. Nothing is easy this year in terms of weather.

You got that right! We just put the greenhouse together in the family room. It's supposed to start warming up tomorrow, but rain for 3 days. Hopefully I'll get this thing outside with a few plants in it sometime soon.

Karen

Dancing with Smurfs is one of the "blue" tomatoes out of Oregon State University.
They are still working on these,but if they are fully ripened to where there is red near the calyx---then they are okay.
I picked them too early last year and they were not good.

I have some tomatoes going, with their first true leaves showing now. They are 'Amish Salad', 'Mortgage Lifter', 'Brandywine' Sudduth's Strain, and 2 different heirlooms (I think), which came from fruits I bought at Lancaster farmers market produce. One was a big red, very tasty, and the other one was a striped type.

I started mine around the first of the month (in vermiculite, too) and have a bunch of little seedlings, certainly more plants than I need!
Sweetie cherry tomatoes
Better Boy
Beefsteak
Cherokee Purple
Early Girl
And a few basil plants, Genovese and Red Freddy
And some peppers for a friend, Ancho and Banana
Plus some spinach and lettuce. Had some trouble finding lettuce seeds this year for some reason, but I found what looks like a nice mix at the hardware store the other day--5 different varieties in a pack.
And I have baby onions up, too.

If that little greenhouse is like the one I have, they're great! I take mine apart and use the pieces to make an extra level of shelves in my greenhouse. And they would just as soon as blow away outdoors as look at you, so yes, by all means anchor that thing! I ordered a somewhat larger version of that same thing to use for the tomato plants when they start to drive me out of the greenhouse! Which always happens. Sigh. Do I really need 30 tomato plants?

woofie said:
... Sigh. Do I really need 30 tomato plants?

Probably only if they're 15 or so different varieties! Isn't the vermiculite pleasant to work with? I'm loving it!


I sowed two more; both are from my own saved seed and... they germinated! So, at least now I know that I can properly save seed whenever I need to.

Also have cute little sprouts of a new (to me) Roma that I'm trying this year, Martino's. Poor things look chilly even indoors..it was supposed to rain today, but it's blowing, snowing and icing instead. Grrrrr...

Yes! Vermiculite is great! Although not as good for really tiny seeds. Lost quite a few of the campanulas trying to transplant them. Hmmm, gotta try that for my morning glory seeds, tho!

I'm finding the same, Woofie. I lost the begonias that I tried in vermiculite last year. And now I'm trying salpiglossis. I've lost 2 seedlings of those, have 2 more sprouts now. I'm just not agile enough to transplant such tiny stuff. Seedlings that grow a little faster do much better in my clumsy hands.

Karen

woofie said:Yes! Vermiculite is great! Although not as good for really tiny seeds. Lost quite a few of the campanulas trying to transplant them.

Don't laugh...but I use the pointy end of one of those handy-dandy, ready to use floss picks. The squarish floss end is easier to hang onto and maneuver with than anything else I've tried yet, and the pick end is skinny enough to tickle one root system at a time out of there without bothering any of its neighbors. I had to find something that would work on those eensy mimulus seedlings...they're darn near impossible otherwise.

Well, I'm usually pretty good at handling tiny delicate things, but after losing so many campanulas, I started my salpiglossis in potting soil! But the vermiculite in little tubs sure works well for some things. I'm still amazed at the results with my Lavatera. Nearly 100% germination, and these are the same seeds that only gave about 50% last year. Going to see if I can get some of the white ones going. Which has nothing to do with tomatoes!

Oh, look at this! Doesn't this sound like fun?
http://www.naturalgardening.co...

I was gone for one week, had one cold night while I was away and all but one of my plants in the garden are gone. I do have a few spares in the cold frame still, but they are all beefsteaks. Time to sow more seed.

Awww.... that's a bummer

But it's snowing here, so be grateful for what you've got

Karen

Sorry for your loss, Seedfork. We are really struggling here in the midwest. I was at a potting workshop today for our Master Gardener's group. Here we were potting up hundreds of plugs/bare root plants, and it was snowing outside. We actually had to buy frost cloth to protect the plants for the first time ever in 15 years.

I have several hundred tomato/veggie/herb seedlings started under lights. If I can't get them out in the next 4-6 weeks, I'm going to be losing a whole lot of plants. PLEASE hurry up, Spring!!!!!

So yesterday, I spent 8 hours starting to pot up my hundreds of herb/veggie seedlings. I put 150 tomatoes into 5" pots. I am now officially out of room under my lights, and still have another 150 tomatoes to go (not to mention the herbs).

I had 6 flats of some of the more cold-tolerant plants outside. For the next two nights, it's predicted to below or right at freezing. All 6 flats are now back indoors (after rescuing them from their slightly waterlogged trays from the rain today). These babies are not going back out until at least Thursday when the risk of freezing is gone. They are now taking up residence on folding tables in my living room. My worst fear is that one of the dogs will accidentally knock a flat off--the tables are really full!

I REALLY need this weather to cooperate, or else I'm going to have to go out and buy more shelving units and lights

I feel your pain. I left my coleus out one night when it got down to around 38° and they were in my mini greenhouse. They lost leaves but they're still alive. Now, they're with tomatoes and various other stuff on a plastic tablecloth taking up most of the family room floor. Poor lighting too.



Karen