Wood Smoke & Tomatoes

We just put up a 10 x 20' portable hoophouse as a greenhouse. We are using a woodstove for heat. We have a fan going, blowing from the far end towards the woodstove which is at the opposite end. The plants are in the middle part of the GH. Oftentimes when putting wood in the stove we get blasts of smoke. Pulled the tomatoes out because they seemed to be droopy... what effect does wood smoke have on tomatoes & other plants? What to do? Any help would be appreciated! Temps are supposed to warm some this week, but we'll probably need to continue heating for some time yet since we're in Zone 5.

Thanks! Sally ;o)

i can give you my opinion for what its worth the smoke wont effect the plants in the intermittant dose your describing, the heat however will ,its the sudden and radical change in temp that is stressing the plants. ever watched a clean burning camp fire? and seen the heat billows it creats in the cool air? and there is the problem, if you start to raise tender plants and or hard to grow plants youll have to upgrade your heat system, barring that you can still use the zoned heat theory of your home to good effect. house the heater in an isolated area of the gh and get one of those fan thermostats and any fan on low blow and set up a prmitive forced air furnace and circulate the hot air slooooowly on the floor for more even and gentle heat distribution , hope my pontifactions are helpful......

I use to heat by wood burner. It never hurt my plants.
The short spell of smoke doesn't hurt them. I just used the fan to clear it out.

Now one time the gasket on the heater door decided to leak one night and the whole greenhouse smoked up during the night and we saw no signs of stress til the next day and they did wilt and turn grayish. I just cut the lower leaves off and let them keep growing. They did fine.

Cricket

Thanks to both of you for your input. I'm starting to relax a bit now that we've been doing this for about a week... getting up in the night, stoking the fire, etc! Just a little stressed, not wanting to lose anything, you know what I mean?

I did cut off the affected leaves as you suggested Cricket & everything seems to be growing fine.

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom!

Sally ;o)

Sally, you can reduce the amount of smoke (coming into the g-house when you open the stove door) by opening up the draft and damper completely for a minute or so and then open the door. This will create a nice draft and push the smoke out the chimney and not have it backwash into the g-house.

If for some reason it still backwashes it means your smokestack needs to be higher to create a stronger draft. (Top of the chimney/smokestack should normally be 3 ft higher than the peak of your roof.)

Also, your fan would do you better justice if it were placed either behind the wood stove and blowing the heat into the far reaches of the g-house Or if you can't fit it behind the stove can you place it above the stove (suspended)? This will blow the rising heat to the far end of the g-house.

Hope this is helpful. (I loved heating my first g-house with a wood stove!)

Shoe.

I've heated a GH with wood all winter for many years, homemade stoves, and they always let out plenty of smoke when loading, never had a problem except the time the wood trash around the stove started smoldering, in the morning the GH was thick with smoke, couldn't go in till it was aired out, and that affected the plants, killed leaves back some.
I have a new 3000 sq ft GH almost ready with outside wood furnace heating water, to pump under grow beds. It's a more expensive setup but is supposed to work a lot better than heating the air. my last one has a stove that holds a half pickup load of slabwood at a fill, (i run a sawmill too but quitting that and getting into veggies more)