banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

banana pit greenhouse update
well temps down to single digits last few days with 7 inches of snow I just checked the banana pit greenhouses I built this spring and all came through green and growing
one has dc,s in it and the other rajah puri both are green and doing fine with no supplemental heat I also finished a 12 x 20 ft pit greenhouse last fall and it mantained 47 degrees through three days of single digit weather with no heat added! with sunny day time temps in the high 70,s I have dwarf cavindish ,hellens hybrid sikiminess ,orinico, basjoo,velutina ( one with fruit on it),blue java/icecream all maintaining and some species actually growing to fast for the 7 ft ceiling also tomatoes and letuice 20 some pomegranate seedlings and 31 velutina seedlings about 2 inches tall will try to post some pics
also is a picture of my seed propagator built from an old dorm refrigerator a ceramic reptile cage heater and a 6 buck digital thermostat off ebay it maintains temp with in 1 degree and sprouts velutina seed in about 6 weeks at 29 c works great get about 70 % germaniton from fresh banana seed works great for tomatoes also

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

How do you heat them?
Where are you located?
Nice job by the way!

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

short answer is i dont thats what makes them so nice the temp below 3 ft stays 51 degres all year around and this heats the pits they never get below 45 degrees even when the out side temp is in the single digits
located in zone 7 north carolina near statesvilloe

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

Looking good! 3 feet is that the total depth?

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

no the depth is 6 ft and the tops are framed from 2x4 and covered inside and outside with greenhouse plastic giving a 3 1/2 in dead air space

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

very cool. i'm a little confused. you dug 6 foot down or 3 ft and the GH roof is 3 ft above soil line?

the pics are small do you keep them in pots and move out of summer or plant in ground?

did you reinforce the walls? would love more details. very cool project.

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

Yes this is inventive.
Craig

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

hi thanks for your interest I dug down 6 ft actullay 5 and a half and the roof is 3 ft above that .the first one i lined the hold with old roofing tin worked but not real well the second one I plastered with cement from home depot worked much better the plants are in the ground
although last year i had a few in pots because I had nowere else to put them if you go to my gallery the pictures will open larger I cant get the hang of posting pics on here
just go here Banana Gallery - obdiah Gallery and double click the picture it will open bigger also pics from last year

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

Thanks for the link yes I can see the pictures better there now.

Cool idea I found a clip from Montana where they build the greenhouse 6ft down and they claim it makes it go from zone 4 to zone 8 without any heating:

https://youtu.be/ZO4yO0Nxv9A

Keep us posted on your project so we can learn from it. I'm moving to zone 7 this year and want to build some kind of greenhouse so I can keep growing what I do here in 9b.

Digging it down a few feet might be helpful as long as the area doesn't have a high water table. I wonder if 2 feet would suffice for a south facing passive solar greenhouse (hopefully built lean to style on the house south facing wall) to keep above freezing in 7a/b

5-6 feet is a lot to dig for a large greenhouse (like in the video)

Re: banana pit and pit greenhouse update
 

Charlotte here.