Anders made our cold frame this weekend. I am really excited to share the pictures with you all, I think he did a great job! I first want to tell you a little bit about why we built one...
I have to be honest, we really don't know exactly what we are doing with starting seeds, but we are making headway. We know we need a cold frame or a green house to put the seedlings in, because of our disaster last year.
Last year we planted tons of seeds and kept them in the
only south facing window that we have in our home; our bedroom. It was not so great. It smelled of potting soil and was dusty for-ever in there, and it was gross. We don't have the biggest bedroom, so we were forever climbing around it to get into bed.
I didn't know a thing about planting seeds and "hardening them off" because I had never done it before. Neither Anders, nor I had ever grown up in a home where this was done. So, what do I do? When it is nice and warm out (I am not sure what the temperature was) and I think the plants are ready to be moved outside,
I picked up all those seedlings that I had been watering diligently and set them out on our picnic table to get sunstroke and die. Yep, it was a fantastic start. I didn't know what the hell I had done wrong. I was rather heartbroken. I would walk by those plants everyday and water them and think, "what did I do wrong?", "how do I do this?!" Ah, the joys! I later found out there was this thing called "hardening off" or something like that. You harden them off by introducing them
gradually to the light, air, and weather elements of the outdoors. Well duh Mandi! Jeesh. Sometimes we just don't think, do we? Well, I learned. It was the hard way, but it was real effective!
So this year we looked into cold frames a bit. I say "a bit" because that is the truth of it. When we ripped out our windows last fall I had the idea to save them all for a green house/cold frame, and for future buildings ie: Up-cycling them. So, here they sat for the entire winter. Just waiting for this day.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
Anders began with some wood he Up-Cycled from work. He is currently doing some demolition work and can take home what they rip out..here is a shot of the beginning. It really didn't take much wood at all!
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
He simply pieced together the boards to the length of the four window inserts (he took them out of the frame, they were too bulky with them in) he wanted and braced them with the 2x4s.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
He checked and made sure they were cut to the proper length.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
Then he began piecing together boards and securing them with a 2x4 for the front of the box. When making a cold frame you want it to be at an angle so that the sun's rays are directed toward, and hit all of the plants in the cold frame.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
He is using the 2x4's shown here to brace the frame while he screws it all together. When thinking about the dimensions (how large and long), you want your cold frame to be tall enough for your seedlings to grow upward as needed until you can safely plant them. You also want to be sure you have enough room for all of them to get the sunlight and air circulation they need.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
We weren't too exact about how big ours was, we just thought about how many starts we needed to put in there, how much space they needed to grow, and how long they would be in the cold frame, and made a guess at how many windows long to make it. So, we shall see if it is tall or long enough. You can see that he built it so that the window inserts could rest nicely on the 2x4s braces.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
You can see how they laid right in there.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
A shot of the inside. No middle brace in there any longer. You can set the seedlings upon something so they are not sitting so far below the windows.
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
He is displaying the different heights he cut the prop blocks. We will use them to
gradually introduce the seedlings to the elements, thus, "hardening them off". Let's hope it works this time! We will use the small prop blocks to open the cold frame first for a short amount of time, and work our way to the larger prop blocks for longer periods of time.
We still have a bit of research/reading to do to figure out how best to execute this transition! I am a bit nervous about it, but if we don't move them soon my two year old will have dug up all the little plants!
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| Nature's Acres Homestead Cold Frame © 2013. |
The finished product. Nature's Acres Homestead's first cold frame. Hand made with Up-cycled/re-purposed materials. This took Anders a matter of three hours or so to make. He plans on taking it apart to use the windows later this year when he builds the greenhouse. Another first for us. I am in love. I love firsts, they are just so exciting.
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