The Brooklyn Botanic Garden Cold Frames

[Music Playing] Eric: It has already snowed up here and as you can see our cold frame has not collapsed or anything, it is still working quite fine. Today, we are going to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I mean not today but we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and we talked to them about the cold frames they made and their cold frames are quite a bit nicer than our plastic beauty here. But I just wanted to give you a little update about what we have got growing in here. So let us take a look. Got my hand in here, wow, I cannot get my hand in there. Oh, it is frozen in. Yes, it is really frozen in. Okay, plan B. If your cold frame is frozen, you might have to kick up. Oh, it really frozen. There we go, just pop in the bottom there. Oh, look at that, it looks great. So, I have a little minimum maximum thermometer here, you can see. It has got down to 10 degrees, which is not great. But I have got some kale growing here and some different salad greens and then a mescaline mix. So this is going really well, it is not going to grow a whole lot more but this will give a nice head start for the spring. So, we will have all those stuff growing and it will be great. Very good. So I like what is going on there, I mean we planted them kind of late so, it is not like we are get some super amazing plants in the middle winter but they will basically slow and stop growing but then in the late winter, early spring, those will kick in again and really early in the year, we will have some nice greens and some nice food you eat. So now we are going to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and I really have a lot of admiration for these people because I had known them for a number of years and they do a lot of outreach and they have some amazing gardens and they are really smart people so, a little smarter than me. So let us go. Am I okay? Tony: You just move a little bit closer. Eric: Look better? Tony: That is great. Eric: And my ID tags show? I am special visitor. Tony: Yes you are. Eric: Today, we are at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to follow up on our cold frames. If you remember we made some cold frames out of 2X4 and PVC pipe and plastic and they are beautiful but here at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, they made some really, really nice ones that are actually a lot better. So we are going to go over there, we are going to go the children’s garden and talk to a woman named Patty who knows more about this than me and Tony here. I have been coming to this Botanic Garden for about 15 years and I think the people here are really amazing. You can just tell that they really like what they do and the outreach people and education people have some great programs. So we are here at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today and Patty Hulse, who is the head of the Children’s Garden is going to show us about the cold frames they made which look a lot better than the ones that I have made. Patty: We have got our cold frames which were put in here at the garden in ‘99. And they have south facing so they are collecting lots of sunlight throughout the day. And we put these guys in of the end of the August and we are going to be harvesting, you can kind of see the turnips are almost ready. They are getting fat to be harvested now, at the end of—actually the beginning of the December. Eric: Yes, it is 50 degrees outside. Patty: And it is amazingly beautiful. We put in some lettuce as well at the end of the summer and those are going to be harvested out and we will reseed then. And you can see a bed right here that we have already taken out the lettuce that we planted at the end of the summer and we put in some new seeds. They have not germinated yet. So it is just box full of soil basically. But our arugula that we also put in at the same time at the end of November that has already got little sprouts and we will be able to harvest that right into January and February and when we will reseed and start the process all over again. We have got some cabbage that was getting munched down, we put these in at the end of august and you can see that there