We’re an organic gardening show focusing on the health and environmental benefits of getting out there and gardening. That’s right. And we’d like to come up with solutions that don’t cost a lot of money. Right. And today we’re going to talk about cold frames or hot frames, whatever you want. Hot boxes. Cold frames and hot boxes. The basic of the same thing. And there’s a couple different concepts that we were just discussing.
earlier. It can be a permanent structure in one part of your yard where you go and open the thing up and put your seedlings in there this time of year for a couple weeks to let them harden off before you go and plant them in your veggie beds. Like I have tomatoes and peppers in mine right now. Or it could be a just a way for you to protect tender plants and you can go ahead and move that thing around.
As you see fit with hoops and a either a sheet of plastic or a large white sheet. I used to be real big on cold frame hot boxes back in the day when I didn’t have any good windows. The house I live in now has so many good windows. I really start on my seedlings inside and can basically grow them. They’re almost ready to transplant.
My windows just got too crowded and I just moved everything outside and I used the technique WAC just talked about. I have these big hoops. Some of them are metal rods left over from old voting signs. You know those things you put in the ground. So I’ve used those. They’re not round. They’re not as ideal as the round hoops, but they work. And then I just use old plastic or sheeting or something and I cover everything up and use bricks to hold
it down. So I’ll take my seedling, my little flats of seedlings that are in my windowsills that have basically gotten too big for the windowsills, move them outside and put them under these things, harden them off and tear the thing down because I’ll need that space to plant things. So they basically serve their purpose and that’s to protect the tender plants from cold nights.
The tomatoes and basil are outside under these hoops right now. And if we did get a frost, they would be protected. Actually, I know one of the books I read was the Four Seasons Harvest. The guy lives up in Maine and they had hot boxes or cold frames where they were growing lettuce inside them through the winter. They were basically pull the snow off of the thing
and open it up and pick their lettuce. If you wanted to be technical, if you took one of my hoop idea or the hoop thing with the plastic over it, snuck a little heat pad under there, you’d have by technically you’d have a mini greenhouse. That’s right. Yeah. Heat pad would be great, which I’ve done, but it’s not really necessary in this climate anymore. Of course, we all would love to have a greenhouse, which you could walk into and it’s heated and ventilated. Right. Yeah.
Now that that that doesn’t happen on the cheap. But anyway, if you run out of space indoors or don’t have a good south facing window, but you have an outdoor area that gets some sun, you can build yourself a hot box, cold frame and start and and I have a stranger growing season extended or in my case, I really use it mostly in the spring to harden off things that I’ve started indoors. That’s right.
Well, that’s it folks. That’s it this week. So goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week because we’ll be back.