Quote:
Originally Posted by siege2050
Greenfin, what was the lowest it got in the actual air above the ground in your pit greenhouse? I am trying to figure out how cold it can get with pstem survival. My pit greenhouse got down into the 20's last winter a couple of times, but I am fixing to put another poly layer on it with an inflater. Wondering if I should try to plant a few dwarf varieties in there in the ground, but dont want die back. Thinking of storing potted nanas in there as well, with just burying the pots in piles of leaves with the aim to get pstem survival. Also, how long did your Dwarf Brazilian take to ripen, I read it takes a while.
|
The lowest air temp was in the upper 30's. Dwarf Orinoco pstems don't lose any height from those temps, but I do manually chop them back some at the end of winter to try and give them more headroom (since I have a low ceiling) to push out a few more leaves before they flower in the spring/summer. Cavendishes die down to the ground every winter; heck, they seem to pack it in and start dying as soon as the temps drop below 50F.
There's a dramatic insulation difference between 1 layer of plastic and using an inflated double-layer. When I added a 2nd layer to my first tunnel 5 years ago and inflated the gap, the nighttime low water temps inside went up 10-12 degrees.
The Dwarf Brazilian suffered a broken pstem soon after that pic was taken and never ripened its fruit. I thought I had it adequately supported, but the pstem snapped at ground level. I have since built a bigger pit greenhouse and have 2 mats of DB growing in there, but it'll probably be next spring/summer before I'll harvest anything from them.