Cold houses and winter vegetables

Coming back from winter break, I've been amazed with the productivity of our winter vegetable gardening experiment in the unheated teaching greenhouse (the Sprouting Wings Greenhouse).

Wow.

Kales, lettuces, and spinach

a flourishing mesclun mix

With no heat, regular poly/hoophouse covering, and plastic water-filled barrels as a heat source, these greens have not only survived, but they've thrived and grown.

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Cold frames

If I were handy with tools (or my gardening companion was), I'm sure I could build a lovely and inexpensive cold frame. But since I'm not handy, and he's not, and we don't have any power tools, I've had to resort to trying to purchase decently sturdy ones.

My first was an aluminum framed one, with flimsy poly panels and top. That didn't last long, even after I replaced the top with glass (hmm, one season's worth there).

So, I ordered this one last fall, which required some assembly (I CAN screw in bolts and fasteners, although it's not my favorite activity). It seems quite sturdy, easy to move around, and I'll see how it works.


Of course, a rectangle of hay bales with an old window top would have worked fine, too.

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Extending the seasons

As a nature observer, I love watching the changing of seasons. The days are definitely getting shorter, the nocturnal symphony is getting quieter, and early signs of fall are signaled by changes in leaf color in tulip poplars, sassafras, and sourwood.

From a vegetable-gardening perspective, though, I'm a bit greedy (even though I'm planting fall crops in earnest now). Not content with the long (three seasons) that I have, I'm figuring that I need to put together the sturdy cedar cold frame that I ordered to replace a flimsy aluminum one I bought a few years ago.

If I was handy with tools, or my gardening companion was (and alas, he's not), I know I could make one myself. But I don't have power saws or fancy drills. My new cold frame, I'm sure, won't look like these high-end English made ones, but the pieces look very sturdy! My idea is to carry over spinach, lettuce, and tenderer salad greens that might otherwise be frosted in our Zone 7b (working on Zone 8) climate, and experiment holding some of them over cold weather (think Elliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest), an inspirational book, to be sure.

And why don't we have more small greenhouses in the U.S. like this delightful one, in a rectory garden in Southern England?

Inexpensive (for a greenhouse), simple, and not too big.

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