Success with tropicals in plastic film greenhouse?

Has anyone had success overwintering tropicals and annuals in a plastic film greenhouse? It's all I have and I wondered if there is anything I should know? Thank you!

allie-by plastic film, what exactly do you mean? Regular 6 or 4 mil plastic that you buy from Home Depot?

I have several grhouses-the longest is 100' and I have two layers of 6 mil grhouse plastic on each. The plastic is treated for several things-UV stablized, anti-drip, anti-dust build up and lasts at least 4 years, but I get up to about 8 yrs on it.
If you are talking about just regular plastic than I don't know anything about that. If it was 6 mil-then that would be better, and if you had two layers with a squirrel cage fan blowing air between them (gets you 10 degrees warmer doing that) then it would probably not be that much different in terms of keeping warmth in than what I use. But I would go to a grhouse supply place on line and look at what they have in terms of grhouse film

We have professional greenhouse material with a professional set-up (we actually have a landscape business and bought it to house trees and shrubs we use in a mid-winter show), so I think that we should be okay. I'm not sure of the mils - I will double check on that. Thanks for your information - I appreciate it.

Leslie

The key thing really is what temperature you can keep the inside of the greenhouse--with thinner plastic it might cost you more money to keep the temperature up than it would with other materials. With my greenhouse last year, I kept it at ~50 overnight (except for one week when it got really cold for a couple days, and the greenhouse dropped to ~35 for a few hours each night), and all my tropicals came through with flying colors. If you can keep it regularly in the 35-40 range and never let it go below that, a lot of the tropicals might go dormant or drop leaves but they should survive (although for tropicals like plumerias that don't need to go dormant, they'll come back much quicker in the spring if you can keep them warmer). Keep in mind though that my days warm up even in the winter, since your climate the days are going to be colder too, your experience may be a little different. Because of the warmer days and the sun heating the greenhouse, my tropicals probably only spent a few hours each night at 50 (or at 35-40 during the cold snap), if yours spend prolonged periods at those temps because your daytime temps don't get very warm, then the plants may not be as happy as mine were.

ecrane-even in the dead of winter, with cold temps outside-if the sun is out-her grhouse will warm up fast-like between 9-10 am, and can reach temps in the 90's in full sun. I think its just the nights that are the issue. Even on nights that it was 17 outside, my grhouses kept to 60 inside. Of course I was burning some gas those nights! Allie-on those colder nights, you can turn the thermostat down some and save on gas.

What kind of stoves are economical to run? My oil radiator thing cost way too much to run. Around $60 per month for a 6x8 GH is too much.