My Coldframe Experiment

Here's a picture of the coldframe that Son #3 and I have been working on.  We built it with 1" insulation board and yes, that's duct tape--I wish that I would have had the pink color--that is holding it together.  The corners are braced with 2x4s and I've gotten a little bit of dirt around the outside already.  The outside will be heaped with dirt up to nearly the top.

You can see my poor little lettuce and mustard green seedlings in it that I just planted today.  They are just a little leggy and wilted from being in captivity too long (Jiffy peat pellets) but I anticipate that they will really take off now that they are planted.  I also planted a row of lettuce and arugula seeds just to see if they would sprout and grow.

I have the cattle panel on top of the frame to mostly keep our Great Pyrenees Daisy from trying to destroy it and from digging up the plants--she's just terrible!!  You can see the glass that we will put on the frame soon.  It's an old sliding glass door from one of our previous homes we lived in.  Son #3 will put a board on the back of the frame to brace it and to attach hinges to so that I can just lift and prop the glass up to harvest my greens.

This is all just kind of experimental.  We're in Zone 5 so things get pretty chilly.  But I anticipate that things should go well and we will be having fresh greens all winter long (I plan to start some more seedlings soon).  I'll let you know how things go.