Cold Frame

 

This weekend my husband helped me build a cold frame for the garden.  We got the design from the book Year Round Vegetable Gardener by Nikki Jabbour, who I heard talk at the Flower Show this year.  She lives and gardens in Nova Scotia, so I think she really knows what she is talking about.  I had to do a little re-arranging in my garden to accommodate the new structure and it involved moving two pepper plants which are going to go anyway, but maybe I will get a few more peppers before then. 

With our first estimated frost date looming on October 28^th, the cold frame could not have been done any later.  I checked our extended forecast and it indeed shows that we are expecting temperatures in the 30s at the end of the month.  We made the cold frame moveable so that it can sit inside the frame of the raised bed and we can put it on any bed in the garden depending on what I have planted so I can practice crop rotation easily with this. 

This year I did a fall planting of lettuce in the first bed, so we put it over that.  I then planted carrots, radishes, and spinach once the frame was built and in place.  We are expecting temperatures not unlike spring temperatures in the next two weeks so I believe they will grow since they are cool weather crops.  We’ll see.  This whole thing is an experiment because I have never done this kind of thing before.  I hope it works out.