You only run a major risk if the plant goes below its minimum temperatures. Greenhouses inherently do protect from frost and colder temperatures to some degree. But, there are outdoor temperatures where you can get frost, even in a greenhouse. That’s one of the reasons we went through the effort to heat ours. Good luck, hope it all works out for you!

You are welcome and thanks for the thoughtful comment! We are trying something different this year and trying to improve on some of the shortcomings, but these cheap greenhouses have worked for many years for us!

We bought a great (2nd) small walk-in greenhouse with 6 plant shelves at Aldi’s this week ((April special) for 39.99 with shelves. Dimension 4.7′ x 2.4′ deep 6.4′ at roof apex. No tools needed easy to put together with roll up door.

Thanks!

I have been thinking about this even further. I don’t see any reason why this greenhouse wouldn’t work for most cold tolerant crops. Functionally it would be better than winter sowing, as mentioned above, since it would be heated to a minimal temperatures.

The drawbacks would be limitations on really early crops, such as onions, that have to be seeded well before it would be reasonable to heat against outdoor temperatures. You’d also be limited to colder crops only. Things like tomatoes/peppers would be really difficult to germinate in this and might not survive the relatively cool temperatures they will experience. For all warm weather crops, you’d really need to protect them a bit more than what you can do with this greenhouse.

Hi Kristin! Thanks for the comment and we’re glad you found this helpful! We don’t start seeds in this greenhouse. It might be possible, but my main concern would be the relatively low temperatures it can experience. Although you can theoretically heat against it, depending on how cold it gets, it can easily be colder than is needed for germination purposes. There is definitely room for experimentation, though, so don’t take that as us saying it won’t work!

I would suggest you also look into what is called “winter sowing techniques.” This is basically the process of using something like a milk jug to create a mini greenhouse. You cut the container in half, put soil in the bottom, plant your seeds and then “seal” the jug up with tape. Place them outside about 8 weeks before last frost. The seeds will germinate when conditions are right, typically providing adequate starts for your garden! This will work great for many cold hardy plants, especially brassicas and other frost tolerant plants that need about 8-10 weeks to be ready. We will be testing this technique this year so we can write a proper article on this subject!

We did capture some this year. We are making some major changes to our site here and one of the tasks is to go through all the current major posts and edit the content more thoroughly, along with posting additional pictures we’ve taken since this was written! Maybe check back in a month or two. Thanks for reading!

Exactly. If you use a dual-zone temperature controller, you can hook the “heat” side up to a heater and the “cool” side up to a vent or a fan. Usually you’d want to only heat up to 40, or maybe 50 degrees, basically enough to protect from freezing. Your vent (or cooling) would kick on at 70 or 80 degrees, or whatever maximum temperature you want. Your fan may run a lot if ambient temperature is above that setting, but that won’t hurt a thing. You can find greenhouse fans on Amazon for fairly cheap, the kind that have closing vents will reduce undesired heat loss at night. Good luck!

Howdy neighbor! Ours was the Gardman brand, linked here. I just checked and it looks like it does ship here, for free, and seller is Amazon itself for a price of $42.94 right now. I hope that helps! Good luck with your garden and thanks for reading!