Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture

We Have a Coldframe in Our Demonstration Garden

Built by Graham Clark
Graphic image created by Graham Clark

Update March 31, 2006

The cold frames were planted on November 16, 2005 with seedlings (2-3 inches tall). The transplants, grown from seed at Sharon's home the month before, included bunching onions, various lettuces, Japanese spinach, and chervil.

We began eating the fresh greens in the middle of winter (end of January), and continue to eat them as April begins. All of these greens are tender, have a delicate, sometimes sweet flavour and are not damaged by insects at all. The rest of our garden is bare except for winter vegetables in the unprotected beds such as leeks, kale and various hardy greens.

"The overall dimensions of the cold frame are set by the size of the skylight bubble or window you use. You can get used skylights at building material recycling stores. It was designed to be made using hand tools, for example, the front panel has 4 boards and the back has 7. Also the top frame is made of 1x 3/16 molding sandwiched between the 1 x 2 frame to make a slot for the window to fit in. All the wood is common dimensioned lumber."

Graham installing our coldframes.

Sharon transplanting salad greens into coldframe beds enriched with compost.

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