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What is SolarGardenDome gardening?
A season extender for northern and middle climates -
Yes, one very important (and obvious) fact, the physical hardware to a SolarGardenDome is just that! It adds several months to the overall growing season and actually gives you three distinctly separate growing seasons. Gardeners have always had a short spring and fall season. With a SolarGardenDome gardeners can have a whole new experience by enjoying a complete spring and fall season - and - a greatly enhanced lifestyle!
Our approach
In the Great Lakes upper midwest region, where we developed the dome, outdoor gardening usually begins in mid to late April, maybe into May. We normally wait until the soil is dry enough for planting and the weather is pleasant. A part of the garden gets worked and early crops like spinach, lettuce, radish, onions, beets, peas and some cabbages are planted. If we're fortunate to have a good spring with many sunny days and occasional rains our gardens are off to a good start. Some springs we're not so lucky - its cold, gray and forever raining. Our seeds can take forever to germinate. Sometimes they rot in the mud. Often its Memorial Day weekend before our gardens are growing well, sometimes even later! Memorial Day weekend - almost June 1st and summer!
Our gardens are just beginning to grow well by June 1st, yet the longest day of the year is only three weeks away!
The actual growing season always lags well behind the theoretical growing season. The position of the sun and therefore the number of daylight hours on March 22nd is relatively the same as it is on September 22nd. Similarly, we have the same number of daylight hours on April 15th as we do on September 1st. Yet the mean temperature for September 1st is much higher than that on April 15th. The earth warms up gradually in spring and cools off gradually in fall.
Sunlight and temperature are two critical factors to growth in our gardens, if we could only coordinate and optimize the two!
Here in the midwest we often say that we have but two seasons - summer and winter. The transition period - spring - is very short in duration. It seems that winter hangs on forever, followed by a few nice spring days. Then, suddenly and dramatically, we have summer's heat. During the spring we experience very wide fluctuations in temperatures. It can be 40 degrees one day, then 80 degrees the next. Winter, then summer, then back to winter again. What causes these abrupt weather changes? The position of the sun is gradually changing, scarcely noticed from day to day. The daylight hours are in direct proportion to the sun's position, also quite stable. Then why do we have such wide variations in weather?
We can't do much to change sunlight, but we can coordinate temperature more closely to it!
As the earth goes through the warming and cooling transitions of spring and fall, air currents are set into motion. As the breezes pass over warm masses they pick up the heat and rise, as they pass over cool masses they loose their heat and fall. All of this rising and falling and stirring about is what we feel as wind. Our temperatures largely depend on where the wind comes from. To eliminate wind helps stabilize temperature.
We can talk about the weather, but can't do much about it! Right?
We either live with it as it is, or we modify it to some degree to make conditions more favorable to us and our gardens. Outdoor air temperatures become more favorable to growth by the time our daylight hours are approximately equal to night time hours. If we can eliminate wind, growing temperatures are increased and stabilized. Theoretically, since we have about 12 hours of daylight by early March and through September we should have a favorable growing season in that time. We usually do have in the fall because the earth is gradually cooling but still warm. Not so in March, though! The earth is gradually warming, but is too cold to promote growth.
A cold frame has been the answer for a long time. In it, the gardener can start plants weeks ahead of the outdoor growing season.
Cold frames? Picture a wooden box somewhere around 4'x6' with no bottom and some kind of glass or clear plastic cover that permits the sun to shine through. The box sits on the ground at the south side of a building in full sunshine. The cover is set up to allow for ventilation and full access of the gardener to the plants. The box is sitting on rich, finely worked soil, where the gardener "starts" any number and variety of plants or flowers in rows maybe 3" apart. Once the outdoor soils and weather is warm enough the gardener transplants the starter plants to the garden for the summer.
By trying a bigger cold frame, we discovered another dimension!
Actually being inside the cold frame is a wonderful feeling for many reasons, not the least of which is protection from cold wind. The SolarGardenDome is actually large enough to move around in comfortably, yet on the ground like a cold frame. The ground it covers warms considerably, like that in a cold frame, and is a large enough area that it can be a permanent garden. With a large volume of air surrounding the plants, ventilation is not nearly as critical as in a small cold frame.
Plants
grow like crazy!! 
Thanks to a dramatically increased start time, February, and lengthened end, November, we found multiple growing seasons. Thanks to the warmer, more stable temperatures, plants grow much faster. No shock set backs with transplanting from a small cold frame into a larger garden, they're already in the garden! Come late spring and summer, we can open screened windows or completely remove the plastic covering. Come fall, its a simple job to replace the cover - with no tools!
The
salads are great! 
