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Growing Veg in a Cold Frame
Bala
Posts: 113
in Fruit & veg
Hi, I am considering making my own large cold frame and grow vegetables in it. Will it be successful? or Is it going to be a waste of efforts (considering UK weather during December, Jan) Will the Veg tolerate the cold ground inside the cold frame? Any one done it before?
Last edited: 01 September 2016 21:06:19
0
Posts
It's not just the low temperatures, but also the low light levels, that slow plant growth down in the winter.
Cold frames are useful for over-wintering cuttings and seedlings to give them an early start in the spring, you could be picking Arctic King lettuce in early spring if you started them off in a cold frame now.
Commercial growers have large heated greenhouses and polytunnels, usually with lighting too.
If you want winter vegetables, there are some that you can grow in the open ground - Brussels sprouts, Savoy cabbage, winter cauliflowers (Aalsmeer are a good variety) but they need to have been started off back in late spring/early summer.
I've got Swiss chard growing in the veg patch now, which will carry on cropping through the winter with a bit of protection in the worst weather, and in late October I'll be direct sowing an overwintering variety of Broad Beans to get an early crop - usually picking in mid May.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
If it's a glass frame you have the added burden of having to water its contents regularly. Perhaps less of a burden over winter where evaporation is low, but it still needs doing!
As Dove say's winter veg should have been started a while back and be in the ground growing on, a cold frame is to keep tender things out of the worst of the weather. I would cover my glass with bubble wrap when frost was forecast removing it when things warmed up though I remember losing some cuttings when the frost continued for a week. In my greenhouse it is better to put some tender things on the floor off the benches if they are not heated, the ground temperature can be quite a few degrees warmer than on the staging, covering them with fleece at night also helps. I learned long ago that heating the whole greenhouse did not pay so made a tent within the greenhouse and heated that small bit. Cold Frames are what it says on the tin, keeping plants and cuttings which are more hardy out of the worst of the weather. Yes they do need some water but never soak the plants.
Frank.
Thanks a lot for the inputs.