How To Make a Cold Frame to Grow Food Year-Round

Today we have a great guest post from Chris about cold frames and how to make your garden productive even in cold weather.

I’m more of a meat and potatoes type of guy but once in a while I love to have a good manly salad.

By manly I mean a whole plate of lettuce, a few handfuls of shredded cheese, another hand full of grilled chicken or nice chunks of ham, a big spoon of sunflower seed kernels, the same amount of bacon bits (or chopped bacon if it’s around), some chopped hard boiled eggs, drenched in ranch dressing.

I usually only get to eat something like that if we go out to eat at a smorgasbord type restaurant, that’s too expensive for my family of four to do every time I crave a salad. I’m going to fix that problem today by making a cold frame winter garden to grow my own salads.

I happened to have all the materials I need to tackle this project on my small farm, you probably do too. If not you can pick up all of the materials you need for less than fifty dollars

I’m making my cold frame out of cinderblocks, and a few old windows, I’m going to fill it with dirt from my summer garden and a few shovelfuls from my compost pile. But you can use anything from straw bales, plastic sheeting, old pallet lumber, anything that will hold the dirt in the shape you want.

You’re probably going to end up making a square or rectangle frame as that’s the usual shape of glass, if you’re using straw bales or plastic sheeting you can make it any shape you like. For the top of your cold frame you’re going to use anything that will let sunlight in but be relatively good at keeping the heat in also. Shower doors, or full glass screen doors are nice because you can reuse the hinges to allow easy access to your crops.

If you’re using old windows and they are the type that slide open that’s also easy for access, plastic sheeting can be rolled back. You see where I’m going with this. Whatever you end up using you need to have easy access to the soil and watering or harvesting your crops…READ THE FULL ARTICLE AND DOWNLOAD THE FREE PLANS HERE