Cold Frame Update: There's a Radish in My Salad!

February 17th

In chilly February, Weldon and I planted a variety of seeds into our first cold frame.  In chilly March we hovered searching for tiny emerald shoots to emerge under the glass roof.  For weeks we watched as erratic temperatures and sporadic sunshine struggled to coax our radishes, kale, chard, spinach, and beets from the soil.  Now April is here...and it's still pretty chilly. Thankfully, a good warm rain last week and a few days of bursting sun did wonders for our adolescent veggies...

April 7th

5 Easy Tips for Cold Frame Happiness:

1.  Patience -- when it's cold, seeds are slower to germinate.  Don't worry if the carrots don't pop right up or the radish seeds linger longer than expected.  The seeds know when its the right time.  

2.  Protection -- growing tender young plants in the shoulder seasons requires protection from fluctuating cold, heat, and wind. Consider adding insulation and thermal mass to equilibrate the temperatures.  Straw bales around the bed are a wonderful windbreak and help to retain the day's heat. Likewise, a few bricks, large rocks, or a jug of water inside the frame will store solar energy even longer into the night. Conversely, when the air is pleasant and the sun is shining, it can be too hot in the cold frame -- consider raising or removing the glass and/or rolling back a bale on a warm day to create air flow and keep the temperature under glass comfortable. These cold season crops don't need to be babied; they just require some common sense considering the mercurial weather.   

3.  Hydration -- There's no set schedule for watering, just stick a finger into the soil and see if you feel moisture within a pinky-nail's depth.  If not, water gently with sun-warmed water (or room temperature tap water).  Even better, let a warm rain take care of it for you!

4.  Simplicity -- one of my paramount priorities when gardening is to keep things simple.  Life is full of complexity without me adding any to it.  In terms of the cold frame, we try to let nature do the work.  If the rain is warm and of reasonable duration, we remove the window and let the rain do the watering.  If the temperatures are comfortably warm for a stretch of days, we leave the glass off entirely.  If nights are cold and days are chilly, we leave everything buttoned up.  Growing food shouldn't be a chore, it should be fun!  

5.  Succession -- something I really like about the square foot gardening model is the way it organizes the yield into diverse and manageable quantities while promoting successive plantings. There's nothing like a gaping block of soil to beckon me to throw some seeds into it!  After many weeks and no signs of life in two of our square foot blocks, we concluded that the first set of carrots and onions we had planted were failures.  (We attributed this setback to our old seed and lazy storage habits after last season.) Hoping for better results in Round 2, we purchased fresh seed and replanted in these areas.  Once again, our bed is fully utilized.  Pretty soon we'll be eating radishes and spinach in our salads and planting something else in their place.

Despite a cold snap earlier this week, we're hoping spring will take off its shoes and stay a while!  But we can't complain.  A late spring means it was a great year to introduce a cold frame to our process.  Our first homegrown harvests of the season are right around the corner -- Yum!