Winter Prepping the New Greenhouse

Hello, dear friends! We had a bumper crop of tomatoes this season with over 100 juicy fruits on seven vines. However, with freezing temperatures on the horizon, it is time to bring down those tomato plants and to close up the greenhouse…

It is also time to close up the greenhouse and make it warm and cosy. In early November, as we were looking at our first light freeze, I spent several days fitting the plastic cover over the PVC ribs of our greenhouse. Mr. Ethereal came in afterwards for me and gave the fit a little fine-tuning to make it just right. 🙂

Here is how the tomato vines looked at the beginning of November. Over Thanksgiving, I spent a day cutting the vines back and picking most of the remaining green tomatoes (cherry tomatoes and Big Boy, but might be Beefsteak). The very last tomatoes hang on the two back vines (two Roma vines).

Many green and ripe orbs have passed on to neighbors, our mail carrier, a couple of delivery drivers, and some to our daughter, who took hers home to her roommate as she herself isn’t a fan of tomatoes (sad, I know!). The above basketful is what is left of the first haul.

After picking tomatoes and cutting down most of the vines, I spent time moving sub-tropical plants around and digging up the bougainvillea and getting it into its new terracotta pot for the winter. These are the fruits of the Thanksgiving picking’s second haul.

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Prepping the Bougainvillea

The bougainvillea we had at our last home in Southern California, I used to cover it with a sheet when we got down to 32 deg. Fahrenheit.

If it got colder, down into the mid-twenties, I would literally throw a comforter over it, wrap it a bit, and hold the blanket on with wooden clothespins and/or some of our wood clamps. Those were the days before we found these much stronger clamps, lol! 😉

I can’t pull over the photograph; however, you can see our monster California bougainvillea here.

Here, the temperature can and does drop to the single digits each winter ~ usually to 7 degrees (-14 deg. Celsius) most years. Bougainvillea CAN survive a little cold under 32 degrees. There was a very old “bougie” on Camp Pendleton at the commandant’s house, and on a tour I learned that it did fine at 20 degrees (-7 Celsius). It sat in a corner of the house with two windowed walls protecting it. I believe it also faced southwest so it received a lot of winter sunlight, which also helps keep sensitive tropicals and semi-tropicals warm.

I found that when a bougainvillea is older and has thicker brown canes, it is able to handle lower temperatures better. Ours is still a baby (4 years old, I think, and it was in a small pot for the first three years). It has 1″ thick but new green canes this fall. They are still way too green to let get taken by the frost!

Here is the bougie in spring of this year not long after I planted it.

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Cosying up the greenhouse

Mr. Ethereal found these heavy clamps at Harbor Freight and normally he uses them in the garage for holding things he is glueing. I found last winter, just after Mr. E. built this new greenhouse, that these clamps are perfect for holding down the greenhouse’s plastic in high winds. So we bought more. 🙂

After cutting some branches on the fruitless pear tree out front, we brought several of the heavier limbs here to the greenhouse to “roll up” the leftover plastic loose on the ground. They will be added once we our temps become hard freezes.

Well, friends, the “fireplace heater” has moved in and we will see how it does. Hopefully, it takes the edge off the coming freezing temperatures. I will have to really prep the plants for when we get the big hard freezes in late December and usually again in February. For now, this will work. Mr. Ethereal brought in the yellow heater to try, too.

The bougainvillea is freaking out a bit at having been unceremoniously uprooted from the ground. It should come back just fine; it is well watered and has Espoma Plant Tone (not sponsored) to help it root in well. It’s just freaking out for now.

If it’s canes turn brown over the next year, I might try it in the ground over winter, but otherwise, maybe this larger pot will be a better alternative for it.

But that’s it, y’all! Adding heavy weight plastic, a bunch of strong clamps, a doorway and a way to ventilate your greenhouse is the way to go for keeping plants healthy and happy during the coldest parts of winter.

Here are a few Iceberg rose blooms to enjoy here as we finish up this post.

Keep warm and I hope your Turkey Day was a good one. ;)’

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Warm hugs,