Shelter Logic Greenhouse - its been a few months since setting it up - here's our review

Seasons.  I love all of them, but my favorite would have to be the "growing season"!  So when we noticed the night air becoming chilly and the leaves falling from the trees, we wondered if there might be a way to extend the growing season a little longer.  Once we looked at all our options it was an easy decision to make - a temporary shelter would be a good way to test the waters before investing anything into a more permanent greenhouse.  

So, we ordered a shelter logic greenhouse - on sale - with free shipping. Yeah! It's 10' wide and 20' long and so far... I am really happy!  We read some mixed reviews and while it's only 2 months old, it has so far withstood 50 mph wind gusts with no issues and torrential rain.  But,  I wonder if our intense summer sun will breakdown the plastic, so we may decide to remove the cover for the summer and replace it with some shade cloth?  I don't know yet, we'll keep our eyes on it.

But for now, we set it up on top of 3 of our existing raised garden beds.  The purpose was to extend our growing season, not add to our electric heating bill, so we added 2 - 55-gallon barrels full of water to opposite ends and spread straw around the perimeter and around the garden beds assuming the water and the ground would absorb some heat during the day and slowly release it during the night.  We also put a remote thermometer inside to monitor the outside temps vs the temps inside the greenhouse so we can easily track what's happening out there from the comfort of our home!  This system also records the high and low which has been interesting. So far, it seems there is only a slight difference between inside and outside at night.  I probably need to probe the dirt to see what temperatures those are holding at.  But the air inside isn't all that warm at night and if the outside temps drop below freezing so does the inside air. Not ideal.  I would be curious if anyone living in the more northern climates has had success throughout the winter with a shelter logic greenhouse and what you do to mitigate the freezing temps?

Sugar snap peas coming up

The tomatoes and assorted pepper plants from the past summer were lost when the temps hit 17* several nights in a row.  Looking back we should have added a source of heat since all was lost over an early cold spell for our area.  But, all was not lost!  The lettuces ( bibb, romaine, red-romaine, kale, cabbage, buttercrunch, leaf, and spinach) didn't seem to mind the cold.  Neither did the carrots or onions and the radishes and peas we added are growing and seem to be thriving, so not a complete loss. I also noticed today that our everbearing strawberries are growing strawberries! 

All in all, it sure is fun to go out to the greenhouse and pick our salad greens fresh from the garden when the calendar reads December!  I'll update again mid-January, but for now, I would say I do recommend the Shelter Logic Greenhouse or any greenhouse if you, like me, hate to see the growing season come to an end quite so soon!