Using cold frame to grow seeds
Rick (zone 6b, MA)
last year
last modified: last year
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Growing plants to maturity in cold frame?
Comments (8)I grow spring salad crops in a frame, though I remove it as the plants get big. I'm on a windy ridge, too, and wind protection is a huge benefit this time of year. I grow spinach and mache through winter in a framed wood box with shower door lid. They've recently been promoted to row cover only, and the frame is getting filled with a new generation of leafies. What fun! If you can remove the translucent lid you use in cool weather from your frame, perhaps you can replace it with a window screen or other semi-shade cover in summer. I've done this before and it worked really well. Here is a link that might be useful: my website...See MoreTemporary cold frame good for growing veggies?
Comments (3)We use coldframes at our church garden. They are for WS babies and for our greenhouse grown babies to grow on in. I use straw bales for the support and sides simply because we then use the straw to mulch the garden. It's cheap and you get the cold frame out of the way quickly. Lots of head room too. We have one door with a screened window on it, I open the window a bit for air! GGG...See MoreWould a large cold frame be warm enough to grow citrus here?
Comments (4)I have a 20 by 30 hoophouse in zone 7b (Raleigh, NC) and my citrus do fine most of the time. I have two small electric heaters running most nights and when it calls for below freezing temps I use a wood burning stove. The wood stove can really crank out some heat but you have to baby it all night long - hopefully I will get better at it over time. Some of the citrus decided to suffer this year (even though it has been mild so far) so I have rigged up a tent inside the hoophouse, a sort of greenhouse inside a greenhouse. I put one of the electric heaters in it and run it all the time - so far it seems to be helping. You could partition off sections of your structure so that one section is super heated while others are not and keep the really delicate stuff in that section. Heating the hoophouse is not the problem. Keeping the heat inside is the big problem. Plastic sheeting just doesn't hold on to heat very well. You can allow things to cool down to the point where your plants go dormant and then you can lower the light levels by covering the structure with a pool cover or other sort of thermal covering. You can eventually get the covering built up to the point that the whole thing keeps itself warm - but you won't have much light which the plants need to stay active. But by encouraging them to go dormant (dry, cool and dark) you won't have to do much work and often they survive til things warm up in the spring. All of this falls apart if you want to grow crops at the same time. If you increase the light levels enough to encourage growth then you have to keep the space much warmer. I have all sorts of citrus and they do not always follow the rules - some that are supposed to be delicate have no problem with winter cold while some that are supposed to winter hardy almost die each year. Some do fine for years and then all of a sudden go downhill, so you have to be flexible. It can be done, but it does require a bit of planning and work. If it was easy, everyone would have citrus in their gardens....See MorePeppermint Plants growing/ Cold Frame Gardens
Comments (1)This is my first year with a fall/winter garden. Our nights have been in the forties some but no frost yet. Here is what I have planted right now: turnip greens, collards, kale, 6 kinds of lettuces, carrots, beets, cabbage, chard. The greens are large enough to harvest, but I will wait to do so until after some frosts sweeten the leaves. The other crops are well underway but not quite ready to pick yet. I plan to use floating row covers over hoops throughout the winter, since I have read that cold frames can/do get entirely too hot here in my southern climate. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out....See MoreRick (zone 6b, MA)
last yearlast modified: last yearRick (zone 6b, MA)
last yearlast modified: last yearRick (zone 6b, MA)
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