Cold Frames for Winter Vegetable Garden

At the end of the summer there is a general dying back in the gardens and forests and by the time the first frost of the fall comes through there is the disappearance of many of the fresh vegetables and flowers that make summer so delicious. Many people will can and freeze all kinds of vegetables from the garden and resign themselves to lifeless and tasteless greens from the market during the winter. Over the last couple years we noticed that our green onions, some kale and mustard greens and even lettuce continue to grow and give us salads during november and december, even some into january. So this year we put together two cold frames to create a microcosm to further increase our harvest of greens into the winter. We are looking forward to having fresh salad throughout the year. One undoubtable fact is that the salad greens, including mustard, beet greens, kale etc, are much more flavorful and tender when grown during the cold months. Meanwhile we are keeping our potatoes in the "earth-frigerator" in the Earth where they grew, covering them with mulch once it gets cold. Carrots will also stay fresh in this way, getting even more sweet with the colder weather. We started out with some planks of pine wood (2"x10") made a box, raised the back part of it, and made a frame for a "sunroom" window which we had salvaged years ago with a view to make a green house (a project for later in the winter) and put the window on top with hinges.

We placed the cold frame on the south side of our house (in progress) where a warm microcosm is created from the south wall stone absorbing heat and the house protecting the frames from the cold north wind. We put compost, topsoil and leaf mulch into the frames, and planted arugula, cress, mustard greens, mesculin salad mix, spinach, beets, cilantro, parsley, a couple broccoli. (They were all seeds left over from summer). This was the last week in September. 4 weeks later the salad mixes are ready to harvest, but since we still have some greens in the garden we will leave them to get bigger before harvesting them. It is important to get the greens growing before the daylight really shortens later in the fall, as the growth rate will slow down dramatically. It is also important not to just close the cold frame lid and forget about the plants as they will heat up dramatically during the day to over 100 degrees, killing the plants. At this time we just close the frame if it is predicted to freeze over night, making sure we open the frame by about 10-11 am to prevent over heating, especially if it is sunny. Later in the winter we will keep the frame mostly closed.

This is a salad from our garden (with the exception of the avocado!). The flowers are nasturtiums which are spicy flavored and beautiful. This is what we are looking forward to enjoying year around in the very near future.

Here is some of the greens in the cold frame. They are spicy mixes with stronger flavors, the bland lettuces tend not to do so well in cold temperatures. We are looking to find the most cold hardy varieties for the winter gardening!