"Winterizing" your greenhouse

For us in the south I know this is a lot different than for most people in the north but I have a few questions.
Cleaning and disinfecting ? What products do you use ?
Here's a link to the manufacturer of mine http://www.larkbuilders.com/greenhouse.html

I want to empty it, and clean, and we are going to put up some additional wire shelves.
Also we are going to get bubble wrap to insulate (after the LAST two winter's where it got very cold here, we want to be a lot better prepared.

We have a heater, and I'm thinking I'll need a lighter shade cloth ( had 75% over the summer for the few things I kept in there)
Thanks for any tips
mj

I spray my greenhouse floors down with diluted bleach.
The greenhouse is large so I use a hose end sprayer with a dial for settings.
I used 6oz of bleach per gallon. Or use a gallon garden and lawn sprayer with 2 cups bleach or more.
After that dries, I spray the greenhouse with insecticide before I put my plants in it.
It detours the pest for a long while without having to spray the plants.

I have never tried bubble wrap.
I am actually surprised that you would even need extra protection in zone 9.

I don't have any house plants to winter over so the only thing I have to worry about is starting seeds during
the coldest of our winter. AT some point in life---i got tired of growing a house plant or tropical and saying , hey look what I am growing--aint it pretty. Instead--i started growing more veggies and saying--hey look at all this food. But thats just me. And I made my small greenhouse big enough so I could make a mini greenhouse inside the greenhouse to start my seeds. As spring approaches---I dont have to use the mini greenhouse.
Mini being a table with poly over it with a single electric space heater.

I am in the process of moving my small greenhouse. 12x40. And making new heat chambers--mini greenhouses.

I have used Tarps to cover the small greenhouse to help hold in the heat during extreme cold weather and I have also used 75 % shade cloth to help hold in the heat at night. But this all means pulling it off in the mornings and putting it back on at night.
Also if you have small heat chambers or mini greenhouses inside the regular greenhouse---you can put a blanket over the mini greenhouse during extreme cold nights. Our extreme cold nights range from 5*F to 25 *F but only for short while.

Cricket's -
Thanks for the reply. I pretty much am going to do what your doing in the way of cleaning up etc.
The last two years we have had abnormally cold winters for Florida. Several weeks of below freezing nights. Not enough to freeze the ground, but lots of hard frost. We have horses also, and our field waterers were frozen several inches down at times. Also froze our water pipes a few times.
The Bubble wrap would be to help from having to run the heater in the greenhouse quite so much. I've got a lot of tropicals and vines that don't even like it to drop to the 40's which it did quite a bit last year.
mj

Do you find that bubble wrap interferes with the sun?

Pod, we still have to use shade cloth here in the winter as the sun can be very strong. I had a hanging basket Sky vine that climbed up to the peak in the middle of the greenhouse and the leaves burned I've even got a sunburn on a 55º day before ! Lot's of people use bubble wrap to insulate, so I don't image it would cause an issue with the sun.

This message was edited Oct 10, 2010 8:57 PM

Good ~ thanks for that experience. I have found some scorching too. Last year was my first winter in the GH and it is always a learning experience.

Deep freeze warning for us tomorrow, time to finish sealing things up for the winter.