February Report

The sunroom has been sunny a few days recently, which has been lovely. I installed a new shelf on the wall at right, on which my orchids are now growing.

Greetings from winter in Iowa! It has been a strangely warm, overcast winter this year -- after several very cold nights (nearly -15°F) in December, we've hardly gotten colder than 20° at night and days in the 30s, which is very strange for what is usually a much colder time of year in this part of the country. And this past week we've had several days in the upper 50s. Those have been very enjoyable.

But with the comparative warmth has come, of course, cloudy skies, which has been unfortunate from the standpoint of spending time lolling in the sunshine in my sunroom. Perhaps only one or two days each week were sunny during most of January. But that did mean that I got a lot more work done on my book I'm writing about historic Iowa gardens -- I would really like to finish that project this year. 

At any rate, I have been able to enjoy a few days among my plants. Other than dealing with a fungal problem on my orange tree (which involved spraying a copper fungicide and trying not to breathe it or get any on my skin), puttering among my many plants has been quite enjoyable over winter. Here are a few scenes:

My sweet peas are gaining height.

I potted on my stocks (Matthiola) seedlings into a window seed starting tray.

I know many people cannot stand the scent of paperwhite narcissus, but I like them, and they
have made my sunroom smell very nice. The jasmine plant at left also has been blooming
with wonderfully scented flowers.

I used the gift certificate my husband gave me for Christmas from Logee's, and the weather was miraculously warm enough for several days for them to ship my order of tropical plants! Here are some of them potted up: Clerodendrum (Chains of Glory), Jasminum polyanthum (Winter Jasmine), Murraya paniculata (Orange Jasmine), Plumeria obtusa 'Dwarf Singapore Pink', Osmanthus fragrans 'Fudingzhu" (Sweet Olive -- which already has wonderfully scented tiny flowers), and a 'True Rose' Pelargonium. I can't wait for them to grow and flower!

My kitchen window, with the many brightly colored primroses that I found at Aldi for $0.99 each last month. They're still blooming their cute little faces off after several weeks! Have I mentioned how much I love Aldi?

I never knew that Sansevieria bloomed. The tiny flowers, to my surprise, were strongly
scented and smelled wonderful. I found this plant almost ready to bloom at (where else) Aldi, 
and bought one even though I always thought Sansevrieia were such a boring plant that I never 
intended to buy one. (Except for the 'African Spear' cylindrical kind, which is pretty cool.)

So that's it for inside. Usually at this time of year there's not much to say about outside, but it's been so warm that I walked around last weekend and took a few photos:

My east patio area, which I'm planning to redesign the planting of this spring.

I know my patio area doesn't look like much right now, but I've been planning to re-do it this spring, to make a Scented Garden. I'll move the plants that are currently here to other beds and plant only plants with nicely scented flowers or leaves: a couple of new highly scented roses, and a number of annuals from seeds that I have ordered. I'll also add several shrubs such as an extra mock orange that I have elsewhere, a small reblooming lilac and some peonies I need to move. Plus some tender bulbs for summer. And in fall I'll add some scented bulbs for spring. I've been reading a number of books about scented plants this winter to research what I will plant.

Here's the area last June. 

I'll move most of the rose bushes that are in the above photo to the beds in front of my sunroom, and move the other things to other beds that need more plants. (The hollyhocks in the photo above are completely self-seeded biennials, and I'll move any that spring up to other beds too.)

Along the east side of my house, the daffodils are already up.

As I walked around last weekend, I noticed that the daffodils next to the east side of my house are already up, and look like they've been up for several weeks already. This is unusually early.

But it's OK with me if spring holds off for another six weeks. I still have lots of work to do on my book before spring arrives, when I will need to spend all my time outside working nearly every day. My plant-filled sunroom has made winter so much more bearable -- even if I haven't been able to enjoy so many sunny days in it as I might have wished. But this next week's forecast calls for mostly sunny days, so I might not get much done....  :-)

Hope your winter is progressing well and that you are enjoying making plans for your own gardens this spring. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Happy New Year 2017!

Cats always know the best places for naps. Tigger and I have spent a lot of time snoozing together here in the sun during the past month.

Happy New Year! We're now in 2017, and I hope we all enjoy a happy and prosperous year, filled with gardening and other life success.

My gardens have been pretty quiet for the past month or so since I last posted -- we enjoyed a warm November, but the temperatures dropped to below-zero in Mid-December, with the lowest being about -15°F (-26°C). While nothing much grows outside in such temperatures, my new sunroom has been lovely and filled with foliage and flowers.

The low temps gave me a chance to see how well the insulation and heating units work in the room, and I've been pleasantly surprised. I set the thermostat to 60°F, and have left the door to our living room open, and the electric baseboard heaters have only come on a handful of times for brief periods overnight, as the more efficient central heater from our house has been nearly sufficient to keep the room warm enough for tropical plants. The temps in the far corners of the room never drop below the upper 50s, even on the coldest nights.

And on sunny days (probably half the days in wintertime are at least partly sunny in Iowa), the room can get quite warm. One morning at 9am, it was still -10°F outside, but because the sun was shining, it was already nearly 80° in the sunroom -- and my 18-year-old cat Tigger was already in his customary spot, warming his ancient bones.

It has been so lovely to spend time reading, napping, conversing with others, and puttering among the plants in my new room, which is now my favorite room in my house. Here are a few scenes from my new Winter Garden:

I bought this Bouganvilla in summer, but it didn't do very well outside and looked mostly
dead and leafless when I  brought it inside this fall and repotted it.
Obviously, it prefers this environment.

My tower of African violets has enjoyed the east exposure in the sunroom. Outside it was
snowy, but inside there were lovely flowers.

Some pansies and a snapdragon that self-seeded themselves in a pot outside in fall -- they seem happy enough indoors.

The last flower on my Mandevilla. In order to flower, it definitely requires more hours of sun than we have at
the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere.

The Arabian jasmine (Jasmine sambac) flowers smell so wonderful. One of my very favorite plants!

Some Christmas plants: a red begonia, Poinsettia and variegated holly. The berries on the holly are not real, but came wired on the plants for holiday effect. However, I bought a couple plain green holly plants a year ago and they have not only survived indoors in my east kitchen window (they're not hardy here in Iowa), but have also flowered and set berries, although the berries are still green.

I started some sweet peas from leftover seeds in mid-December as
an experiment... 

...and potted them up with a trellis a week ago. They've already doubled in height...

...and I've able to observe the twining effect up close, which is really pretty interesting. I don't know if there will be enough light indoors for the sweet peas to flower later in winter -- but even if they don't, they'll have a big head start on ones I plant from seed outdoors. We'll see what the experiment yields. 

Lots of snow outside, but warmth enough in here even on cloudy days. The tall plant at left is an orange tree that I got for free from someone who offered it on Facebook because she was downsizing. It hasn't flowered yet, as it hadn't been fertilized for a long time, but I repotted and fertilized it and hope for fragrant flowers at some point. I hung icicle holiday lights across the front windows, which can be seen outside to cozy effect (I like them so much I think I'll leave them up for the rest of the winter).

In the dark of midwinter, the icicle lights make the house look cozy from the outside, and also light up the inside of the sunroom in a pleasant glow, which makes the room more enjoyable to be in at night.

A lush and verdant view from the couch.

Back to my favorite spot for a good read (and perhaps a little nap too).

All my gardening is indoors these days, and I hardly miss the warmer seasons this winter, in contrast to the feelings of desperation that I usually experience even by the beginning of January. We'll see if I'm able to continue to fool myself that it's not really winter as it drags on through January, February and most of March, but I feel hopeful.

Hope you enjoyed the holidays, and best wishes for the New Year! Thanks for reading, -Beth

Sunroom Final Progress Report: Plants and Furnishings

Hello! I've spent the past week doing the fun part of making my new sunroom: beginning to fill it with plants and furnishings.

As you may recall from my earlier posts, it's long been my dream to have a conservatory or sunroom, a sunny room filled with lush, green plants in which I can try to forget that it's winter here in Iowa. In June, after much planning, my builder began work enclosing the front porch of my 1924 four-square farmhouse. The project was done by the end of the first week in August, when I had finished painting the interior and the floor. Here are the earlier posts about the sunroom planning and construction, if you missed them:

Winter Sunroom Dreams (last November)
Sunroom Progress Report #1 (June 29)
Sunroom Progress Report (Construction Finished!) (my last post)

I've moved some initial furnishings and plants into the space, although there will be more of both as we get closer to our first frost. I had most of the plants, furniture and plant stands already, so I didn't have to get much more, with the exception of the wicker sofa.

A tour of the (somewhat) finished project, starting at the sliding glass door end of the room:

Looking in the other direction from the first photo. At forefront is circular plant staging steps, with a small breakfast/tea table behind, and a shady corner next to the sliding glass door at the end of the room.

A closeup of the shady corner. I moved the Smurf terrarium that I made last winter to this
corner, so that it won't overheat, although I think I might look for a taller side table to put it on.
I found the tiered plant stand for $5 at the local Master Garden plant sale in May, and it looks
spiffed up after three coats of white paint.

In the middle of the room, on the other side of the small breakfast/tea table, are four quarter-round plant steps that I found at Aldi (my Absolute Favorite Store!) this spring for about a quarter of the price they're sold for online. I had long lusted over the Victorian wrought-iron versions of these found in decrepit English conservatories, but this new version is just fine. Note the Pineapple Plant with a baby pineapple fruit on top -- I found it at Walmart (of all places!) last week and simply had to have it after reading last winter about how it was to grow pineapples and citrus that conservatories (and indoor stove heating) were developed, and how exorbitantly expensive it was to raise them in Victorian England. Yet Walmart can now sell them to the masses (including lucky me!). What an amazing age we live in.

My favorite area of our new room: the comfy new sofa surrounded by larger plants. I had most of the plants already, but found the oversize Cat Palm and huge Macho Fern ($4!) that are behind the sofa for half off at Lowe's last week. And one of the things I miss most during our months of brown and straw-colored winter is green grass, so I found some putting green, indoor/outdoor carpet that's like a thick felt. It's washable and very soft underfoot -- both our son and our cat fell asleep on it the first evening that I rolled it out. :-)

As the weather starts to cool off next month, I'll begin bringing in some more of the many tropical and temperate potted plants like jasmine, hibiscus, pelargoniums, etc. that are outside on our patio (minus insects, with luck). Some of them I'll store in the basement under florescent lights like I do each winter, but some might look nice in here.

Also, I'll bring in a couple of the wicker chairs and the green porcelain garden stool that are currently outdoors, so that we can use the chairs at the breakfast/tea table and/or in the seating area. Even though it's been pretty warm in the room during the past week or so, I can't tell you how lovely it is to sit or lie on the sofa in there, surrounded by green, growing plants -- my Winter Garden. We're thinking of putting our Christmas tree in here this year -- won't it look lovely from outside, lit up by strands of twinkling lights through the windows?

I hope the room will stay warm enough for plants during the frigid temperatures of January and February -- the baseboard heater manufacturer assured me that the three units should be more than enough, even with all the windows, and we did have closed-cell foam insulation blown in to seal and insulate the floor, ceiling and walls under the windows. I guess we'll just have to wait and see....

Anyway, hope you are enjoying your late summer gardens in your part of the world. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Sunroom Progress Report (Construction Finished!)

Aaggh! I can't believe I haven't posted since the end of June. Six weeks! It's back to school time already (we started our new homeschooling year this week). Where has the summer gone?

The big news is that my sunroom project is finished being constructed! The photo above shows the finished project.

If you read my first Sunroom Progress Report that I posted at the end of June, you might remember that my front porch was open, and that big changes had been made since the start of construction in mid-June. Here's a brief recap:

BEFORE: June 13th.

June 21st. Walls and ceiling framed

June 28th. This is what it looked like at the end of June, when I last posted. The ceiling and walls were insulated and sealed with spray foam, and the windows had been installed. The sliding glass door was put in a few days later.

In any construction project, as most of you undoubtedly know, the changes come quickly and are very exciting in the first few weeks of construction. Then the detail and finishing work has to be done, and it seems like the pace slows to almost a standstill (and sometimes does come to a standstill if any temporary issues come up). We were lucky that we didn't have any big issues, but a few minor ones occurred that took a bit of extra time to deal with.

But things did keep moving. here are a few highlights of the continuing progress since my last post:

By July 12, the ceiling had been covered with beadboard, the small areas of wall had been drywalled and the windows were being framed in. I asked my builder for extra-deep window sills that I could put plants on.

By July 27th, the interior was largely finished and the builder moved outside to finish the exterior.

While the builder was working outside, I painted the interior during the last week of July and the first week of August.

Finally, the electrician came back last Friday, August 5, to install the lights, fan, baseboard heaters and thermostat. I then painted a couple coats of light gray paint on the floor on this past weekend. Look at all that sunlight!

The finished exterior. We desperately need to have the rest of our house exterior painted, and I need to re-paint the front steps, but at least the new sunroom has good paint coverage.

We decided to leave the front steps and railings that now lead to nowhere because we thought it might look boring without them. I'm thinking I can put plants on them next spring and summer -- I've always wanted one of the fancy "auricula theatres" that are making a comeback in Britain, although it's too hot for primroses to grow very well here, so I think perhaps I might try a few pelargoniums (non-hardy geraniums) in pots arranged on those front steps. And perhaps I'll grow clematis on the rails, and maybe on the front porch columns too.

Now all that remains is furnishing my new sunroom -- the fun part! I've been waiting for the floor paint to thoroughly dry, but in the next few days I'll begin filling the room with my many plants that are stuffed throughout the house and outside, and perhaps I'll buy a few more -- I think I need a big palm tree....

As for furniture, I've ordered a wicker sofa that I need to pick up, and I can add a few wicker chairs that I already have, plus some colorful tropical cushions and a carpet of some sort. I'll also put a small table and chairs at the end near the sliding door, so we can have breakfast or tea in there on sunny days.

I have wanted a sunroom or conservatory for many years, and now I'm almost looking forward to this winter! :-)  Well, perhaps I won't dread the idea so much as usual. Seriously, it's been so hot here in Iowa this summer that we haven't turned off our air conditioner since mid-June. It's been so unpleasant outside that I've scarcely been able to keep the grass mowed, let alone keep my too many garden beds weeded. (I'm thinking I need to reduce the number of gardens areas that I maintain -- but that's the subject for another post). I certainly am looking forward to the weather cooling down as we get closer to September.

I guess that's why I haven't posted in so long, because not many of my garden areas have looked that great this summer -- but there were a few exceptions, and I'll post again in the next week or so with some updates on those.

And I look forward to catching up with your posts too. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Sunroom Progress Report #1

Before: June 11, before any work was done to enclose our front porch.

These are exciting times around here, not just because it's summer and lots of flowers are blooming, but also largely because there has been rapid progress in enclosing my front porch into a sunroom where I can enjoy plants and flowers during our long, cold winters here in Iowa.

I have long desired a classic, glassed-in conservatory of the kind that are common in England, but the cost of constructing and then heating such a room is prohibitive here. Here in the US, with our extremes of heat and cold, a sunroom with a solid roof is much more practical.

We have a porch with a roof and floor already (it was enclosed with screens when we bought our house eight years ago, and we had those removed and ended up having to totally re-build the rotting columns and floor five years ago, so it's pretty solid). So I decided that the easiest and most affordable thing was to simply enclose our existing porch with walls and windows. (Here is my post last winter when I desperately longed for greenery amidst our snow-covered landscape, and considered the sunroom idea.)

I was somewhat concerned that I might ruin the look of our 1924 farmhouse (and I still remain concerned about that issue), but my winter desperation greatly outweighs those concerns. So after my very generous dad offered to help us with the cost, I called my builder this spring and we got started planning, and, finally, building!

The scene in the photo above was taken on June 11, a couple of days before construction began two and a half weeks ago. We invited some friends over and had a "porch farewell" party that evening, as that was the last time we would be able to enjoy our open porch (it was a bit sad thinking about it, but it was also about 95°F that day and almost every day since, which illustrates why we hardly ever actually sat on our porch: too hot, too cold, too windy, too snowy, too buggy, too humid, or simply too busy to sit outside at all).

Anyway, here is a progress report in photos, taken over the past two and a half weeks:

June 16: Little Kitty cutely reclining against the bottom sill. Top and bottom sills have been sealed against the existing porch with foam tape to keep out drafts, and insulation has been blown into the hollow porch columns through those holes that are visible in the columns.

June 21: The walls have been framed in to hold the windows (our builder used 2x6 construction to support the weight of the heavy double-window units. The ceiling has been framed down so that it can be insulated.

June 22: The next day, after the electricians have installed the rough electrical wiring. they'll come back to install the fixtures and baseboard heaters after the interior has been finished.

June 27: The spray foam insulation guys used tarps to enclose the porch and then spray 3-4" of closed cell spray foam in the ceiling, under the floor and in the wall space under the windows.

June 28: Yesterday, the biggest change of all: the windows were delivered and installed! Now the space feels like it's Inside, not Outside. The sliding glass door will be installed at the forefront of the photo after more of the interior finish work is done.

Still to be done:

1. installing the dropped ceiling 
2. finishing the interior with beadboard and wood trim (which I will then paint)
3. installing the electrical fixtures: lights, fan, baseboard heaters, etc. 
4. finishing the exterior with siding and exterior trim, which the builder will paint
5. I will then paint the floor -- I'm thinking perhaps of a light gray and white stenciled design of some kind, but I'm open to suggestions....

The exterior.

As I mentioned, I'm still worried that I might be ruining the look of our old-fashioned farmhouse. Now that the windows are installed, they look absolutely huge to me, out of scale with the rest of our house. I had originally envisioned seven windows across the front (odd numbers being visually more pleasing), but my builder convinced me that three units of two windows mulled together would look less busy and give me more uninterrupted glass (which is good in a sunroom for functional reasons, obviously). And he is right that fewer windows are a simpler, more classic look, but I really am worried that the windows are just too large, especially because they are right out front and therefore look even bigger and more prominent.

Of course, there's nothing to do about it at this point, as $4,000 of special-order windows are already framed in and installed. I guess they do look like a similar size with our existing front door, which with its sidelight windows is even larger, and maybe after they are framed and sided in, they will look better.... Perhaps I'm simply suffering from a common case of "buyer's remorse" or second-guessing my own decisions.

And I really haven't permanently ruined our old house; no historic elements have been removed and if a future owner of our house doesn't like the sunroom, it can easily be entirely removed, leaving virtually no traces on the original design of the porch (which again, we already had restored to its original design five years ago even though it cost more to do it that way -- did I mention that the 90-year-old front header beam under the porch roof was sagging dangerously and we replaced it with an 28-foot-long, engineered-laminate support header beam, rather than change the original design of the porch by adding center supports?). I think we've been pretty sensitive to the historic elements of this house.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the fun parts of this project: choosing some comfy wicker furniture, accessorizing with colorful pillows and an outdoor rug, and of course, filling the new space with lush, green and flowering plants that make me feel like I'm on a tropical vacation every time I enter the room.

When winter comes from now on, instead of this...

I'll have something more like this! No, my ceilings won't be high enough for
giant palms, but I'll still be able to have some pretty large plants in my own
bright and cheerful sunroom. (Pinterest)

I'll post another update on my sunroom project as we make more progress. Thanks for reading! -Beth

On Starting Seeds and Greenhouses

Another couple of rainy, windy, cold days here in Iowa, so I'm inside again, starting a few last seeds and thinking about the process and how I might improve it. The seedlings in the picture above are the petunias I experimented with growing from seed this winter.

I was feeling spendthrift and lazy just going to the nursery and buying flats of petunias and other annuals already started, so I decided to try starting some petunias from seed in mid-March to see how it went.

I have started seeds before and it's usually worked fairly well -- the vegetable seeds I've started for my husband have been quite easy, and I've also started biennials like wallflowers and perennials like the 150 dianthus that edge my four L-shaped pond garden beds (although those are started in late spring and potted up outside until they are planted out in late summer, so they are different than starting seeds indoors under lights in winter and spring).

I bought a soil blocker this spring and used it for the first time with these petunias, and it worked quite nicely. As you can see in the photo, the petunia plants are coming along fairly well, although I had problems with uneven germination and size of plants.

Petunias are not the easiest plants to start from seed and grow inside -- first, they require at least two months of growing in warm, bright conditions, during which many things can go wrong: damping off (I run a small fan nearby to keep the air moving gently), drying out if you forget to water them or go away for a few days, and probably numerous other maladies that can afflict them. And the seeds are quite tiny, so Burpee's (the ones I found locally, so I didn't have to pay for shipping) are pelletized for easier handling, which is fine with me, but that makes them more expensive, and only half of the 50 seeds (2 packets) that I bought germinated, which is disappointing.

I also have some sweet peas and dahlias started from seeds on the top shelf, as well as some freesias just coming up in the pot below. The lights plug into a timer on the wall, and a small fan is on the floor nearby.

To grow them in my basement, I use florescent lights and a heat mat under the flat, both of which cost money to operate (even independently of their purchase cost). I calculated that the 24 petunia plants that I have managed to grow to this point have cost me more than three times as much, per plant, as buying them already in flower from the the least expensive nursery near me:

Cost of 24 Petunia Plants:

$ 3.00    50 Seeds (2 packets @ $1.50 each, only 24 of which germinated)
$ 2.00    Seed Starting Soil
$ 6.50    Cost of running two 32W light bulbs for 14 hours/day for two months
$ 2.50    Cost of running heat mat for two months
$ 3.00    Cost of running small fan (for all seeds)
$17.00

At the Amish nursery near me, a six-pack of petunias costs only $1.29, so 24 petunia plants costs $5.16, less than a third as much as it cost to raise them myself. Even if all 50 seeds had germinated, it still would have cost $17 for 50 plants, compared to $10.75 for 50 purchased plants, which would still be nearly twice as much. Hmmm!

Now, I know that not all plants take as long to start as petunias, and that there are other reasons to start plants from seeds besides saving money: only a limited selection of plants are available as starts locally, so if I want special varieties, I will have to grow them myself. Also, I'm serious about my hobby of gardening, and there's the argument that I really can't consider myself to be any sort of knowledgeable gardener if I don't know how to successfully propagate plants.

So I still want to be able to grow things from seeds, but I might have to re-evaluate how I do it. Much of the cost in my calculation comes from the long periods of running lights, which I would not have to do if I had a small greenhouse.

A Greenhouse?

Now, greenhouses are very common among British gardeners, who can hardly imagine gardening without one. But they're fairly uncommon here in the US, for several reasons: first, it gets MUCH colder here, so it costs a lot more more to heat a greenhouse in winter. (In England, many places hardly get below 20°F, compared to below 0°F here.) Also, it doesn't get as warm there -- in England, many gardeners grow tomatoes in greenhouses, because they just don't get enough heat to grow them outside. Here, a greenhouse is practically unusable in the hotter months (unless it is to sterilize soil).

Many British gardeners can hardly imagine gardening without one of these. (Hartley Botanic)

But this is more like what I'm eyeing: a 4'x8' lean-to style greenhouse.
(EarthCare Greenhouses)

I've been considering getting a small, relatively inexpensive greenhouse for several years now, but I wasn't sure where I would put it, until a few months ago a place occurred to me: The south side of my garage.

I had tried planting sunflowers and iris there to make it look less ugly, but I have realized that I should just consider it a "utility area" and use it as such. I removed most of the plants last week and will at least put a cold frame or two in this spot.

This area on the south side of my garage will never be pretty, with the gas tank, vinyl siding and tiny, ugly window. But it does get full sun and is relatively protected from wind, as well as being near electrical outlets inside the garage.

The eight-foot-long greenhouse would be just to the left of the gas tank, and the garage window could be replaced with a small insulated door, as the inside framing is already appropriate for that. Opening the garage greenhouse door on cold days would release less heat from inside the greenhouse than an exterior greenhouse door would.

I would probably only use the greenhouse in late fall, to protect tomatoes and herbs from frost, and in early spring, to start seeds. I could run a small portable heater on a thermostat in spring to keep the temperature above 50° or so. There would be a cost of heating the greenhouse (I have calculated using an online greenhouse heating calculator that during the months of March and April it would cost about $25/month to keep it at 50°), but the cost could be averaged over a number of flats being started at one time. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to start warm-season flowers and annuals in there until mid-spring, but cool-season annuals and vegetables would probably do well in there earlier in the year.

Of course, I can buy a hundred flats of petunias for the cost of a greenhouse, even the the inexpensive one I'm considering. Realistically, I will probably never justify the nearly $1,000 it will cost me to set up the greenhouse. But on the other hand, it might be fun to have one, and it might make me a more knowledgeable and experienced gardener (or it might just be a place to sit out of the wind on sunny, cold days, or just end up as a place to store pots, like so many gardeners' greenhouses end up...).

I'd like to ask readers, particularly ones gardening in cold climates, whether you have ever used a greenhouse successfully, and for any tips or recommendations on doing so (or not doing so, if you recommend against it).

Thanks for reading, and I hope your own seed-starting efforts are going well this spring! -Beth