Using the Cold Frame

I had long admired an old tobacco cold frame on a main drag in our town. When I finally convinced my husband I needed one, we stopped one day and asked to take measurements. He used these to build mine in 2000.

I sited it on the north end of the big garden, extended the fence around it, and used hay bales for warmth and to keep weeds down.

It had glass covers at first, but they soon broke. We always kept the covers roped down as this is a high wind area. That’s corn on the far left.

We have used these plastic roof panels ever since.

When I got really sick, the Big garden was let go. We eventually took down the fencing and returned it to lawn. The cold frame was moved to the south side of the Small garden in November 2005.

This is June 2009 and I’ve planted all the vegetables in the small garden. Just flowers for the flowerbeds and herbs left in the cold frame.

Even though we have -25F most winters, I had grown a lot of cabbage in 2009 and wanted to try to store it. I’d read storing it inside was not a good idea, due to smell. I hung the plants head side down, by the root end, put the covers on and then hay bales.

They froze and rotted. Cold frames don’t make good cold clamps in this area.

In 2011 the trees had gotten so big behind the Small garden things were not doing well. We moved the garden south as far as we could and moved the cold frame to the new north side of the garden.

With this move, the cold frame was not within a fence and did not have the hay around it. With the prevailing winds out here, it was necessary to wrap the structure in plastic to prevent heat loss.

By 2014, I was starting far more plants than in the past. The cold frame would be full but it would be still too cold or early to plant things. I’d had to move things out and onto the picnic table and hope for the best.

In 2016 we had a particularly warm spring and I took to leaving the covers off the cold frame at night. One morning I went out and discovered a skunk had gotten into the cold frame and destroyed 1/3 of the seedlings. So I had to make sure the covers were on each night.

A few days later, it figured out how to climb up on the picnic table and ruined more seedlings. At that point I was planting as fast as I could.

By 2017 the old covers were beyond usable so my husband started making new ones. The roofing panels had changed a lot over the decade or so and we were able to get good quality light transmitting ones.

We had planned to build a second cold frame in 2017 so as to avoid the skunk issue. We had gotten local rough cut wood milled up on the mountain west of us.

We had to sift the compost and move the bins to the east side of the garden before we could build the second cold frame.

We ended up using some of the old covers this year as there wasn’t enough money to finish making them.

The new cold frame filling up May 2017

And for the first time, the cold frames were empty by the end of June 2017!

This year I will be starting over 1700 seedlings, up 200+ from last year. I will have to be on top of the planting, even with the new cold frame!