In this greenhouse covering review, Growers Karen and Jeff of J&K Growers in Dallesport, Washington share there experience with different greenhouse plastic coverings and why they swear by Solexx greenhouse covering.

“Solexx keeps the extremes away from your plants – consequently we don’t have stress (laughter)”

“Would you use Solexx again?” “We have no use for any other product”

Click on the video below to watch the full interview

Interview with Solexx customers, J&K Growers , Jeff and Karen
Transcript from Video:

I’m Phil Edmonds from Farm Wholesale (now Adapt8) and we’re here today with Karen and Jeff from J&K growers in DallesPort, Washington and we thought you’d like to see how professionals grow produce in a greenhouse.

What kind of things do you grow?
We’ve grown lots of stuff in here our strawberries and all these vegetables the peas and beans and this year we’re trying broccoli and cauliflower and tomatoes.

And what’s the highest value crop?
Probably the tomatoes

When did you build this greenhouse?
We started building it four years ago in the fall. We built it all through the winter. It’s mostly 2-inch galvanized steel. This greenhouse is about 4,000 square feet, it’s 140 feet long and 33 feet wide. It’s 11 feet in the very center and then 9 more feet up to the very top. It’s a total of 20 feet tall.

The growing medium is Coco fiber and we have pumice mixed in with it. We use drip irrigation.

Why did you choose Solexx to put on the roof?
We hoped it wouldn’t blow off like the other stuff did.

Had you tried other greenhouse coverings before Solexx?
We had six mil poly film. It was on the greenhouse for almost 30 days before the wind took it off. We had a about a 55 mile an hour wind that came up one evening and loosened up one of the corners. The wind just kind of peeled it back.

So you chose to try Solexx greenhouse covering as the alternative?
The reason we didn’t buy it the first time was the cost was a little higher than we were ready for at the time, but then we decided the cost is worth it.

Tell us about your past greenhouses
Our first greenhouse was a double poly greenhouse and we weren’t impressed with the double poly. It was what we had on our property. It was available and we needed to get moving.

For our next greenhouse, we went to check out the corrugated clear polycarbonate and we weren’t impressed with that either. It was really hot in the greenhouse. When the sun came out — it was just really too hot. And when it was rainy or cold out, it was just nasty cold in there.
We had investigated greenhouses for a long time. We actually went to Holland. The average glass greenhouse loses a BTU per square foot per hour per degree differential for outside and inside temperatures. So if you’re 20 outside and you want to be 40 inside, you’re going to lose 20 BTUs per square foot per hour.

In this greenhouse (the new one with Solexx), we’re less than a half a BTU for that same range. We’re probably closer to a little over a third of a BTU per hour. We know this because we paid for the propane, and we can calculate exactly how many BTUs we used the year before.  We know what our outside and inside temperatures were, so we know that we’re somewhere net third of a BTU. And it’s very important today to be watching your energy costs.

When you’re we’re dealing with a corrugated greenhouse roof, it looks great and it seems great because it’s got all those different angles that the lights supposed to bounce in at, but when you figure out your BTU costs you, have to figure out your surface area. Solexx is flat so a square foot is a square foot. But in a corrugated structure, you’ve got 1.4 square feet for every one square foot out there because of the extra surface area caused by that corrugation. That’s going to increase your heat loss in in the wintertime, so that’s going to cost you more propane which means you have to grow more crops (to pay for it).

This past winter it was down into the single digits, and we were able to keep about 20 degrees above the outside temperature in the greenhouse without heat. If you have three really cold days in a row it progressively gets colder in the greenhouse or if a cloud deck comes and we don’t get any sunshine. However, the minute the sun comes out we’re up to sixty degrees in here — even if it’s 20 degrees outside. And we’re not measuring temperatures from up there at the 19-foot level we’re measuring temperatures at the plant level.

Do you ever worry about snow load?
No, we stopped worrying about the snow load when the snow started sliding off.  The only thing we worry about in regards to snow is when you walk out the door that it doesn’t slide and land on your head (chuckle).

How is Solexx in the summer?
Summer heat doesn’t bother the plants the way you’d think. When it gets as hot as 120 degrees in the greenhouse, we want to quickly get out of there because it’s too hot. The plants (on the otherhand) just live right through it, and temperature isn’t really the determining factor whether plants grow well – it’s how intense the sunshine is. And outside in the wind (or in the fast-moving air as we call it here), they (plants) dry so fast that the sunshine is really hard on them, but in here they don’t dry very fast.

You haven’t found anything that’s burned?
Our south wall is a polycarbonate and yes, we’ve burned the first six feet of our plants over there on that edge because of it (the old polycarbonate endwall). We did a growth test on the tomatoes. Tomatoes in the first bench over there don’t grow as well as the center two benches because it’s too close to those extreme temperatures – too hot and too cold.

Without cooling it, you find that the plants haven’t ever been stressed except where they are close to polycarbonate or the clear material?
Yes, isn’t that amazing! That’s part of what you do to grow crops well is to keep the extremes away from them. That’s what Solexx does so well — it’s all indirect lighting. We have A LOT of indirect, really bright light in July, but since it’s all indirect, it doesn’t burn the crops. We don’t have holes in our leaves, dried plants or burnt leaves. Consequently, we don’t have stress! (chuckle)

So, would you purchase Solexx again for your other greenhouses?
We have no use for any other product!

Would you recommend Solexx to other growers?
Anybody who’s thinking the ahead, yes. You’ve got a look at Solexx because it’s just a different way to grow things. Your roses are probably better, you probably have less disease problems, you need to try it.