Hi! I’m Dave Epstein, this is Growing Wisdom, and it is cold February day. It’s the middle of winter, and not much of a wake end yet for spring, but you could start gardening using a frame. Cold frames allow you to push seasons in either direction, and we’re going to talk about those a little bit today. You could take plants which was outside last fall and store them for the winter, or you could begin to grow things like lettuce and things like that a little bit earlier than you normally would. Let’s take a look.
This is a super duper cold frame, this is probably one which is out of the reach of most of you in terms of home ownership to build one of these on your own property. We got some major, major plants stored in here. You can see there is tons of plants down in here, there is actually a stairs. This cold frame is 8 ½ x 9 feet deep, a lot of tropicals down in here. This is only zone 6, we got plants which are zone 10, 11. This is epiphytic rhododendron, this could be seen in New Guinea or New Zealand, and here it is Massachusetts but it is in this cold frame, below zero out there, warm enough for this guy in here.
What’s important if you build one of these is to have wonderful drainage, the floor should have some gravel down here. In this particular one we have shelves, and also you have green house plastic up here. It’s two pieces with a little bit of air in between which allows the light to filter in but also keeps the heat in as well. This particular homeowner has a light, which she leaves on all winter and that adds a little bit of heat as well. There’s actually two cold frames in this property, the other one is doable, you could build one of these yourself. So we will go take a look at that. This is the smaller called frame, it’s 4 feet by 8 feet, and it’s 3 feet deep. That might be a little deep if want to grow vegetables, because the vegetables would have to go up towards the light. You want the soil of them much closer to the top of the cold frame, but this particular cold frame is more for storage. We got many plants in here, which didn’t get the chance to get planted last year or will be planted this spring. So this is more of a storage cold frame.
You could also build levels inside of this. So, you could have one area where you are growing things, and other areas where you are storing. Notice there is some gravel down here at the base that is wonderful for drainage. I recommend that you face this off towards the south, the sun is right there. That will enable it to get more sunshine, and then again you could build this out of wood or if you don’t want to go through all of the construction yourself, you can order a cold frame online. Just measure and area, be sure that you have a well drained area, where you have a clear view of the southern sky, and your cold frame would be good to go. So cold frames are great way to extend the season, actually, 12 months a year.
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