BCU - Earth
Garden Entrance
Contact B.Howe
My Cold Frames
There they are. Made out of scrap paneling, and scrap moulding, which had previously been part of my rec-room. The windows were here when we moved in, but like so many things, I figured that I would do something with them one day. The kids and I slapped these together in a couple of minutes one day last fall in preperation for the perennial and shrub seeds I had ordered. I didn't like the thought of having to build and place these after the snow had fallen.
I added the bags of leaves as additional insulation after reading an article describing how to make a cold frame out of 4 bales of hay and a window. I figured, better safe than sorry. I wasn't putting anything tender in them (as far as I knew) but the leaves would help ward off quick temperature swings.
When I put the pots out into the frames in January, I noticed a significant difference in temperature between the inside and outside of the box. Even in the beginning of March when I opened them for the remainder of the season, the clay inside the box was moist - not frozen.
Things to watch out for: a few mice moved into one of my frames, tunneling under the tray of peat pots that I had put in; temperatures soar inside the frames on sunny days, even when it's very cold outside, the box will heat up; my design of frame is flawed as follows - snow falls on glass, melts, water collects at base where it freezes the window to the soil, idiot gardener tries to open frame in the dead of winter and shatters glass, broken glass is extremely difficult to find in snow and dirt.
Brett
Last Updated: March 19, 2001