Is this possible?

[TheDudeJim]

I live in Southern New England. Would it be feasible to grow in the winter using the dirt floor of a pole barn? I plan on growing in the barn regardless, but I'm wondering if I can skip putting in a cement floor. We have a cheap source of heat so the barn would be kept at proper growing temperatures.

 

[Floridian]

I don't know why you need to have a cement floor,you are talking about growing with soil and pots with artificial lighting right?I can't see why you couldn't have the pots sitting on a hard dirt floor.Hell it may even be better after your done watering and getting runoff,you can just dump the excess from the tray onto the floor,beats having to dump excess out in the backyard or something like that

 

[Betterhaff]

Why not put down some stone. Wouldn’t be as messy as a dirt floor and a lot cheaper than cement.

 

[Akss]

I was thinking he meant planting directly into dirt floor... But i dont know...

 

[TheDudeJim]

I was thinking he meant planting directly into dirt floor... But i dont know...

I was talking about planting directly into the dirt floor. I really can't stress enough how high the quality of our soil here is, the topsoil is a beautiful loam that goes very deep.
We have access to heat, but my concern is that without a floor it may not be able to keep up. I'm not an expert, so when I don't know something I ask to see who might know more than me.

 

[Robney]

My worry would be that the heat can only go so far down to warm the soil, and if the roots go outside that zone you might be suffering some issues with frozen roots. Why not just dig up the soil and put it in a pot? You get the nice soil of your area and the root zone will stay warm with the ambient temps. When you're in the barn in the winter, is the ground frozen?