[Stoves] Heating a greenhouse with Geranium plants.

[Carefreeland at aol.com]

Stovers, 
I find myself heating my greenhouse with an increasing amount of greenhouse  
waste every year. This year I cleaned out several hundred dead geranium 
plants.  These had accumulated while the greenhouse was semi-hibernating for several 
 years. 
I tended the geraniums  in 4" and 1 gallon containers like a low  maintenance 
garden as " Plant ballast". This kept moisture levels up and  temperatures 
down for the few plants I was actively growing during this period. 
The geranium stems seemed to have a high heat content for the weight of the  
material. When properly dried they made a good fire starter. Tomato plant  
stems in contrast burn ok but have little heat value. I would rather breath  
geranium smoke than tomato smoke. ( LOL) 
I have probably combusted a sample of nearly every plant I've ever grown  
inside or out. There is a lot of incentive to recycle the excess sun energy I've  
trapped in my plants to provide a warm environment to grow new ones. 
Anybody ever tried burning geraniums or any other bedding plants? What is  
your experience? 
I haven't been active online lately because we have been buried under over  
40 inches of snow in Dayton, Ohio, USA this winter. We had 15" in one day 
during  the first week of March. Beside plowing snow ( with up to 50% ethanol as 
fuel)  and salting, I have been buring a lot of wood and other wastes. Broke my 
heart  to heat with all those hickory limbs that I should have converted into  
cooking charcoal. 
Between snow removal, I spent a number of near and below zero degree F  
nights stoking woodstoves just to keep my seedlings from freezing.  The  only way I 
could take a night off was often to spend all day feeding fuel and  building 
charcoal for overnight. 
Now If I could just figure out how to run this fancy new high speed  computer 
I have, there is plenty more to chat about.  I can't seem to  indent my 
paragraphs on this new AOL 9.0 and my address book has been lost in  the transfer 
to name a few glitches. oh well. 
We are: Thawing out, floods draining off, and finding that the sun really  
didn't burnout behind those endless clouds. Maybe Spring will finally get here.  
I've converted from buring in stoves to burning off sizable piles of brush 
while  clearing the dump outside. 
The Amure Honeysuckle is a serious invasive species in these parts. Similar  
habits as the wild privit in the Gulf coast states. The hardwood produced from 
 the old stems of this bush is as dense as Oak wood.  With only one weeks  
drying in the sun, I touched off ( set fire to) a pile this morning. It is  
amazing to me how clean a damp green plant can burn if given enough air. 
 
Dan Dimiduk 



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