Do you live someplace cold and wish you could still eat homegrown vegetables when it’s snowing outside?
I’m lucky enough to live in Florida now, but I remember being miserable when the winter took away my fresh salads.
Fortunately, you don’t have to live in sadness even though you aren’t living in the Sunshine State (today’s high: 83F). Building a simple cold frame is an afternoon project. My wife came across a good little article from Eliot Coleman on cold frame gardening a few nights ago and wanted me to pass it on to you guys:
“One of the keys to success is to focus on vegetables that thrive in, or at least tolerate, the cold. No, a cold frame isn’t going to put vine-ripened tomatoes on your table in January. But it will easily provide you with the best carrots you’ve ever tasted, firm-fleshed leeks and scallions, succulent cooking greens, and a host of salad ingredients.
Most of the popular vegetables Americans grow are “chilling sensitive,” which is to say they don’t appreciate temperatures below 50°F. There are, however, many “chilling-resistant” crops, vegetables that survive winter’s freezes, providing they have some protection.
Spinach is one of the best such crops. It yields all winter in the cold frame. So does chard. Scallions are good, too—even better from the cold frame than from the outdoor garden. Carrots are outstanding. I make a big sowing on August 1 and enjoy delicious, tender baby carrots all winter. A thick layer of straw applied in late fall protects them from temperature swings. The cold turns some of the carrots’ starch to sugar—my kids liked them so much they used to call them “candy carrots.”
A cold frame is a bonanza for salad lovers. Lettuce is available until about mid-December, when it finally succumbs to repeated freeze-thaw cycles…” (Read the complete article.)
In his article, Mr. Coleman recommends you find a way to vent your cold frames during the day so they don’t cook your vegetables. Here’s another idea: add thermal mass. If you put a barrel of water in your frame house, you would keep the temperatures from getting really high or really low. It works excellently in my greenhouse and would probably work in this application as well.
So… what are you waiting for? Go gather up some old windows and scrap lumber and get building. The money you save on organic salads will probably pay for your effort in months.
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