Insulating the soil underneath your greenhouse is an essential (and easy) step for energy-efficient year-round growing. Here's the basics. Often when building an energy-efficient greenhouse, people think about solar greenhouse design with the right orientation and enough thermal mass. But they don’t realize that there is a whole lot going on underneath our feet. The…
So, you want a year-round greenhouse? Time to dig deep (literally). At Ceres Greenhouse, we design and build super energy-efficient, year-round greenhouses that are built to last. We talk a lot about growing bananas, citrus, figs, tomatoes and other fresh fruits and vegetables, but we rarely “dig deep” to discuss the first steps of building…
Looking to design an aquaponics greenhouse? Here are some quick tips and strategies for making the most out of your greenhouse aquaponics investment. 1. Place grow beds in sunlight; fish tanks in shadier areas If fish tanks are in direct light they can easily get too hot during the day, lowering the dissolved oxygen in…
Growing bananas and guava, this off-grid greenhouse is anything but your typical commercial greenhouse Step into the solar greenhouse at Golden Hoof Farm in Boulder CO and you're greeted not by a monoculture of mass-produced greens or flowers but by a forest of fruit trees -- guava, avocado, mango, banana, lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit, starfruit, dragon fruit, pineapple,…
Learn how to harness and store solar energy to keep your greenhouse growing through the winter for free (or next to nothing) Greenhouses can be interesting environments to grow in. This is because standard greenhouse materials like glass and plastic (“glazing”) are extremely good at letting in light and heat in, and extremely good at…
An interview with Mike Oehler, author of “The Earth Sheltered Solar Greenhouse Book” We’ve talked about walipini’s: underground pit-style greenhouses that don’t have a foundation wall or frame. Going a step beyond a walipini is a framed greenhouse built underground. A common design for these is often called an "Earth-Sheltered Greenhouse", a term popularized by…
The curious things about apples is that if you eat a Fuji apple, and plant the seeds from that Fuji apple, you won’t necessarily get a Fuji apple when that tree begins to fruit. You may get something similar, or you may get something completely different. Sour. Mushy. Huge or tiny. It’s a total gamble…
Our mobile greenhouse just outside of Palisade, CO A mini- greenhouse goes on the road. Driving around Colorado, and soon the country, we call it fast food. At CERES we often discuss how difficult it is to try to explain what our greenhouses actually feel like when you walk into them. Regardless of the season…
