4 HN users recommended this documentary4 months2019–2026score 4
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters bring it up in geothermal, greenhouse and vertical farming threads as a low-tech example of growing citrus in a cold climate.
Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.
“Really interesting story/concept and I'm hoping to replicate on a small scale” (HN, 2023)
Completely agree. One of my favorite Kirsten Dirksen videos is about Russ Finch using geothermal energy to grow citrus in a greenhouse located near Alliance, NE. [this video]
Russ Finch grows citrus in Nebraska using geothermal energy.
Yes I think that would work. Check out this guy, he grows oranges in Nebraska in thermal heated greenhouses. As I recall he talks about cooling as well. He has tubes around 8 feet under the ground running around the yard. [this video]
Oranges in Nebraska with underground tubes for heating and cooling.
If this interests you, I recommend checking out this video by Russ Finch, who grows citruses (orange, lemons, etc), figs, pomegranates in his sunken greenhouse in the middle of Nebraska in the snow/20F, and uses geothermal heating (long tubes buried underground) to heat it during the winter months, and cool in the summer months. Really interesting story/concept and I'm hoping to replicate on a small scale when I renovate my back yard in the coming years. [this video]
Sunken greenhouse growing citrus in Nebraska snow, heated and cooled geothermally.
Almost all the videos on this channel are fascinating btw. Greenhouses enveloping entire houses/villages[0][1] in northern Europe to earthships[2] to someone growing citrus in Nebraska using trenches[3] to entire villages underground in Australia[4] [0] [link] [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [this video] [4] [link] I'd also recommend the channels FLORB and Happen Films though they're admittedly a little corny. [link] [link] Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't recently did a tour of an interesting alt home as well. [link]
Citrus grown in Nebraska using trenches, from a fascinating channel.
Agreed and this has been proven already in greenhouse farming. There are many greenhouse farmers that grow crops that would otherwise be impossible to grow in their zone. One example is a orange tree grower in a very cold zone that can sell oranges to his local community at a tiny fraction of what it costs to ship oranges from California. He still makes a profit and the produce is fresh. Here is a small scale example [1] but I can't fault this guy for keeping it small given his advanced age. I hope I have that much energy when I am older. [1] - [this video]
Small-scale example of an orange grower in a cold zone.
> My family grew strawberries in eastern Colorado for a few years and one of the big problems was the extreme sun. In order to extend the growing season we used low tunnels to shield to plants from frost. However, the low tunnels during the peak summer months would act like a lens melting irrigation lines and even damaging produce. Sounds like problems more ground-coupling of the thermals would help mitigate. This guy used "Earth Tubes" in combination with partially buried and appropriately oriented greenhouses: [this video]
Earth tubes with partially buried, oriented greenhouses.
Slightly off topic, but I saw this video [0] about a retired postal worker in Nebraska who grows citrus fruit in an ingeniously designed greenhouse heated with geothermal. (Not magma geothermal, but earth tubes geothermal that treats the ground as an infinite thermodynamic reservoir. Works in the same way as a refrigerator.) Can anyone here comment on if this could be done at scale? Could the economics be feasible? [0] [this video]
Ingeniously designed earth-tube geothermal greenhouse for citrus.
Thanks for linking those sources. I think this is the key part of the article: > increased demand over the coming years, including data centres, cryptocurrency miners and greenhouses. Price them out. Don't give sweetheart deals to uses that aren't beneficial to the local economy. Additionally, these uses don't necessitate baseload. Crypto should be using cheap, renewable variable power sources. I'm genuinely curious what greenhouses means in this case. Heating indoor crops in the winter? Geothermal would be more effective for this. [1] [1] [this video]
Very competitively efficient, but you don't need 932F for greenhouses? /? oranges in Nebraska; [link] - "Nebraska retiree uses earths's heat to grow oranges in snow" in Alliance, NE, USA at -40F sometimes [this video] : Passive , Net Zero, Carbon Sink solar geothermal half-buried greenhouse that produces citrus in the winter at a colder northern latitude Geothermal air with 6" tubes, 8ft down , out 230ft (75 3) into the yard, blower, reflective sheeting on the south sloped back wall; est $25k build cost. 30F interval with no fans on in the winter. ; Net zero greenhouses probably win UN SDG Indicator 13.2.2 Total greenhouse gas emissions per year ; UN SDG Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts* A New Zealand word for an [excavated] [semi-] underground greenhouse is "Walipini". FWIU from YouTube, there's a new style of Northern Chinese greenhouse now in Canada: they build a big wall of clay/soil on one long side and lower a blanket over the entire greenhouse with a TODO HP motor in the evening to keep heat in the greenhouse at night. The wing shape makes it's easy to capture rainwater in a trough on just the one side. Geodesic domes are very resilient, easy to assemble, and can also be semi-underground with vents at the top to actuate. An aquarium heater can heat a tank of water to heat an arctic greenhouse. Geodesic domes get so hot in the summer that it's necessary to hang cloth to shade and cool. Also learned from YT South Korea: (JADAM JWA (Castille
Passive geothermal half-buried greenhouse producing winter citrus at about $25k.
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