Every year I add something new to my garden.  It might be a new fence, a greenhouse, or even a new garden.  I don’t dedicate a lot of budget to the garden so normally it is made of something that had previously been something else.

This year my new addition is a cold frame.

What exactly is a cold frame?  Basically, it is a structure that is normally placed on the ground and is built in such a way as to capture the heat from the sun to extend the growing season.

This year I was fortunate enough to not have snow on the ground in early April and it gave me a chance to clean up the garden and start thinking about growing outdoors.  Now I have lived in Wisconsin for 7 years, which is plenty long enough to know that there is still ice under the soil and there will probably be snow on top of it again.

So what a cold frame does is give us a chance to get some of those cold weather plants started just a little bit earlier than normal.  After my lettuce, radishes and onions get started in here, I will probably move it to another part of the garden to give some of the warmer weather crops a couple of extra growing weeks as well.  It is a way of fighting off those nights that just flirt below freezing with just enough captured heat to make the difference.  It causes the soil to heat up quicker too, and the roots like that.

So now, let’s go back to my cold frame.  A couple of years ago a friend at work was remodeling a house and he had a bunch of old windows that needed a new home.  Naturally Pete thought of me and I became the new owner of 8 old windows.  I brought them home and added them to my pile of stuff waiting for a reason to be used.  With my love of gardening and a bunch of old windows, I knew it was just a matter of time before they got re-purposed.

I put these out about a week or so ago.  I used recycled 2 x 12 boards from an old deck to build the frame and placed them around a part of my garden where I had scattered some lettuce and radish seeds, a few onions and I can’t remember if there is anything else.  I put the windows on top, just laid them there, nothing fancy.  When the rains were forecast for this week, I decided it would be easier to let mother nature do the watering, so I took them off and leaned them against the frame from the outside.  And it rained and watered my seeds.  Just the way it is supposed to be.

Now today, I saw the forecast and it is calling for 2-4″ of snow.  It was the last thing we needed, but it had to be expected.  That is where my cold frame comes in.  I went out there today to put the windows back up on my cold frame so the snow doesn’t fall and chill the ground.  When I went out there, do you want to guess what I saw?

That is right, the radishes were poking there noses through the soil.  It probably wouldn’t have hurt those radishes to get a little snow on their noses, but just think about how happy they are going to be when they are tucked in all cozy like into their cold frame instead of lying there in the snow.  It will probably buy them 5 or 10 degrees and when the snow is gone I will be 4 or 5 days ahead.

Sounds like a plan, let’s see if it works.  I’ll tell you more about how I use reused materials around my garden another day, maybe tomorrow.

Enjoy your gardening folks, and don’t be afraid to take something old and make it something new in your garden.

PEACE!

KT

Day 18