A Project Over 3 Years in the Making; Geo Thermal in the Pumpkin Patch

I figured I would have had a lot of this stuff done back in March, but such is life.   The good news:  geothermal is up and running.  I started researching about geothermal systems about 4 years ago when we were deciding to move.  Before we moved into the house I had the one patch dug out and put in corrugated pipe which was then covered.  Today I finally hooked up the inline fan to the pipe and ran it for the first time and it works.

Geothermal 2016 - X is about where the stump is now

At 11:30 today I turned it on for the first time and took the soil temperature with a probe the goes 4 inches down.  With two nights of 34 degrees in the forecast, I've been scrambling again to figure out how to keep the plants warm and if I could warm the soil so that radiant heat would help keep the plants from freezing (someone forgot to tell the weatherman that it is the first weekend of summer).   Eddy Z had warned me that he burnt up his roots with his geothermal system his first year, so I knew to not to do too much.  At the same time I wanted to give it a test to see how much I could warm the soil for the big freeze.  I've had the temps mostly around 84 degrees in the greenhouse most of the day, but let it get up to 94 degrees when I first turned the fan on.  

The pipe that goes underground goes up to the top of the greenhouse so the air that is pulled in is probably 4-7 degrees warmer than what my temperature gauge shows.   I put my hand at the exhaust end of the pipe to feel the air coming out after about 1/3 hour.  It was clearly cooler than the air in the greenhouse.  Eddy had told me that the soil warms a fair amount more at the intake end of the pipes and heats less at the other end, which makes sense, so I have the intake end at the stump end of the plant.

At 4:30 today I shut the fan down and took the soil temperature again at the same spot that I took the temperature earlier.  I was pleasantly surprised.   When I started the soil was 68 degrees.  When I stopped it 5 hours later it was 80 degrees.  Not bad.  That is actually more warming than I would have supposed.  This will be particularly nice in the early parts of future seasons when the soil is cold.

In other news, I'll be pollinating both plants tomorrow.  Both at about 14-15ish feet.  My thought is to cross the 2005 and 2255 together.   Then depending on what pollen is available to possibly sibb cross the 2255 or cross with the 282, but I haven't checked to see what males I have available.  More on that tomorrow.