Solar Greenhouse Fans

[veggiechicken]

Sounds a lot to me unless you're growing some plants on staging above other.
I work on one tomato/cucumber plant per 2' so a 10' side would have 5 -6 plants. You may get another 2 across the far end.
I've failed with melons and don't grow peppers so can't help there.

[quanglewangle]

i agree with VC - rather a lot.

Last year (my first, so take that as a warning) I grew in a 500mm by 3m bed down one side: 4 cordon tomatoes and 6 melons. Was way too crowded but worked better than I probably deserve. Both tomatoes and melons were successful on the whole. Lost two melons to botrytis but saved things by reacting quickly with drastic thinning.

On other side, on staging. grew 3 aubergine plants in 270mm pots and 3 or 4 peppers in smaller pots all stood on a sand propagator (about 500mm by 1000mm), which had been used earlier for seed raising. They were very successful.

Will do fewer chills this year - they got in the way a bit and we still have loads in the freeze.

[veggiechicken]

Another thing to think about is the growth habit of the tomatoes you intend to grow - whether they're Bush/determinate
or Vine/cordon/indeterminate.
Bush toms are shorter but denser whilst Vine toms will grow tall, to the roof, need support and regular pinching out of sideshoots.
All toms aren't equal so choose carefully and set up your supports in advance.

[quanglewangle]

Melons are pretty heavy. Make sure the structure will support them.

If you want to see what undisciplined vine tomatoes can do have a look at this

https://youtu.be/EsuaMGen1EU

I set the camera up to see the melons grow but the tomatoes had other ideas.

I will do better this year.
I will do better this year.
.
.

[rary]

Back to the fan, I keep a fan running all the time when I have plants in the greenhouse along with 8 auto vents the fan protects the plants from frost damage and the vents are supposed to protect from over heating though I have experienced higher temperatures than I would like, I do have an electric supply into the greenhouse if I didn't I think I would have vent fans and solar powered fans fitted, I have avoided both blight and botrytis

[ESBkevin]

I agree that automatic window openers are a worthy investment, takes some of the worry out of visiting the greenhouse morning, noon and night for those of us distracted with 'other 9-5 jobs' away from home.

The big thing commercial growers do to aid circulation is to strip off all redundent leaf growth, thats everything up to well set fruit on a tomato plant. Look at thier rows of stalks with ripening fruit all exposed. Also remove all plant debris so that it can't hold botrytis near the plants. Ground drip irrigation. That means there is no need to install and runexpensive devices and the harvest is easier as a by product.