Tag Archives: cold frame

Dirt2Table: Cold Frames

dirt2tableHowdy fellow plant, gardening and food lovers! This is a good time of year to start planning and even acquiring materials for a some possible projects for next years food production. One possible project that most of us could benefit from is something that could extend the food growing season both earlier in the spring, and later in the fall. I’m talking about a cold frame.

A cold frame doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate to enable you to be eating garden fresh salads as early as February, and then next fall, all the way through October and into November! This article isn’t going to tell you how to build a cold frame, but if you do a Google search for “Cold Frames” and just look at the images tag, you will see hundreds of different ideas for cold frames from small and super easy to build, to high tech, high efficiency models that are closer to full blown greenhouses than cold frames. Somewhere on this spectrum might be something that is just right for your garden. You can also find free plans for simple cold frames with a Google search. Start thinking about where you could put one, and what materials you might already have or might need to obtain to get it built by the end of January. Then, when there is a January thaw, you can either prepare the soil where your cold frame will be or fill containers that you will put into your cold frame, and plant some lettuce, spinach, onions, kale, and other early salad crops. A few radishes would be good too.Cold-Frames-102

Next issue, we’ll talk about another project to work on during winter so you will be able to put it to use in the early spring. Yes, I mean Beekeeping.

Contact Tom King at tom.king@fairparkcommunity.org for more information.