GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Gardening TV

How To Prune a Tree or Bush – GF Video
Can you show us how to prune a tree? Yes. For this post, we’ll be pruning an apple tree in spring, but this method applies to most trees. Watch the video, then read on.

How To Prune A Tree – Some Tips:
- Early spring or fall is the best time to prune.
- Use bypass pruners for live wood, anvil pruners for dead wood.
- Cut away branches that cross each other.
- Less is not always better.
- Buy a quality hand saw
There are a couple of types of pruners. I have a pair of hand pruners, the kind that look like pliers that cut limbs, and then I have the larger kind the require some upper body strength for larger limbs. Bypass pruners tend to make a cleaner cut on live wood. Anvil pruners have one blade that presses against a flat surface, these work best with dead limbs, as they can smash up live wood. But again, use what you got!

One of the big reasons for pruning is to remove branches that rub against each other, or are about to. Rubbing branches damages the bark and can invite disease. You’ve probably seen branches that have kinda fused together after years of touching, something you want to avoid. Remove branches that will start to rub as they grow before it happens.

Pruning less from a tree is not always better. For fruit trees, its important to have what’s called an ‘open habit’, you want air to flow through the tree.

Tools To Use

I was recently given a 4 cycle gas trimmer from Troy-Bilt (a GardenFork sponsor) that has a chainsaw pruning pole attachment that is excellent for pruning a tree. I was able to use this to cut off a large limb that had snapped on one of our standard size apple trees. With the pole extension, this rig can reach 11′ up, and it cuts fast. Be sure to keep oil in the chain bar reservoir and the chain sharp. You can see how The Impatient Gardener uses this powered pole pruner here.

Chainsaw Pole Pruner Attachment

Get yourself a quality hand saw. I prefer the kind with teeth that cut on the pull and push. I think the blade is called a Japanese blade. Cheap knockoffs will only bind in the tree and mean more work. I used to buy cheap ones, then I got a nice one, and its great.

You get what you pay for with saws. This one is made in Germany and works great.

When showing people how to prune a tree, I use two kinds of hand pruners, bypass and anvil. I use the anvil pruners a lot on blueberries and raspberries.

To start pruning, first cut away branches that cross, these will cause problems down the road, so visualize which limbs will get larger and cross. Its easier to cut them now, not later.

How much to prune? The common wisdom is you can prune out about 25% of a tree without harming it. I know that you can’t actually measure 25% of a tree, but step back from time to time while you prune and see what effect you are having. Its OK to cut out large limbs like I did in the video above.

Seal the pruning cuts? No, you don’t want to seal up the bare wood, the tree will form an internal chemical barrier to protect itself from any infection or invasion.

Here is a great example of the before and after of a nicely pruned fruit tree. I pruned this tree in Austin when the Troy-Bilt Saturday6 team got together and volunteered to restore a community garden. Note how you can see through the tree after pruning.

So this is my version of how to prune a tree, any thoughts or suggestions? Let me know below.

FYI: Troy-Bilt is a sponsor of GardenFork and provided me with these tools. Its part of how we pay the bills here. I won’t feature products I don’t think are of good quality.
March 31, 2016
DIY Cold Frame From A Recycled Window – GF Video
Build this DIY Cold Frame with a window your neighbor is throwing out. I see windows out for the trash all the time, I could probably have built a whole greenhouse already! I like this home made cold frame for starting and growing salad greens, as they don’t get too tall, perfect for this rig. Watch the video:

Tips for building the DIY Cold Frame
- A wood frame window works best, but use what you’ve got, or what you’ve found.
- Be sure to prime and paint all surfaces.
- Install a thermatic vent to keep it from over heating.
Our cold frame has a thermatic vent built into the plan, so you don’t have to manually vent the cold frame greenhouse, you can buy one of these vents at a home improvement store. Buy the vent here.

What I also like here is we are recycling materials to build DIY cold frame. You can find old windows somewhere in your town, someone is most likely replacing their windows, and they will put out the old ones for trash pickup. Or check yard sales, or your own garage attic or barn, its very possible there is a window or two sitting there that you can use for this cold frame plan. Also consider using scrap plywood for this, it doesn’t have to look like fine furniture, its for the vegetable garden after all.

Be sure to paint the cold frame with primer and an outdoor latex paint, you may also want to wrap the edges of the plywood that touch the soil with duct tape to keep moisture from wicking up into the plywood. You could also use old garden hose to protect the wood. Slice open the hose along its length and slip the bottom of the cold frame into the slot in the garden hose.

If you want to extend your growing season, check out the books below, they are the ones we use!

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March 8, 2016
Mini Greenhouse Build #1 – GardenFork.TV
This is the first mini greenhouse build we did and we learned a lot. We have built several more since, and they are great garden season extenders. I start my salad greens early and can keep kale growing into winter with a PVC mini greenhouse. Watch the how to video:

A few tips on the Mini Greenhouse Build
- You can use 3 mil clear plastic from the hardware store.
- Buy the most flexible PVC tubing you can find.
- Be sure to have plenty of staples for the staple gun.
- Use at least one thermal vent.
You can get a UV resistant greenhouse plastic, but I don’t. My thinking is a tree branch or dog is probably going to crash through the mini greenhouse before the plastic is broken down from sunlight. Be sure to double over the plastic where ever you are stapling it to the frame. Where the plastic wraps over the edge of the plywood end, you can run duct tape or a slit rubber hose over it to reduce the chance of tearing.

There are several kinds of PVC pipe available. Go to your local hardware store and test the different kinds to see which bends well for the size greenhouse you are building. Pick up some pipe holder brackets from the electrical department of the store to hold the PVC to the wood frame.

Buy more staples then you think you need. I always run out! Hammer in any staples that don’t go in all the way themselves. Fold over the plastic where ever you staple it to reduce tearing.

Thermal vents are key here. The mini greenhouse build can overheat easily. I use at least one vent, if you use two, put one high and one low on opposite ends.
Buy the vent here.

If you are building this to sit on top of a raised bed, make the dimensions slightly smaller than the raised bed size, so the hoop house will drop just inside the borders of the bed, makes it much easier to deal with that way.

Four-Season Harvest The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Our cold frame hoop house greenhouse is based on those built by Eliot Coleman in his book, If you follow the procedures outlined by Elliot in his book, you can harvest food all winter. nice. We also learned a bunch from Nikki Jabour’s book. (affiliate links)

Hoop House Cold Frame #2 – DIY GF Video
March 7, 2016
How To Start Seeds Indoors – GF Video

I made a new video on how to start seeds indoors to reflect all I’ve learned lately. This included making cool paper pots and cardboard tubes.

To start seeds indoors

You need warmth and light and water. Lots of light and warmth, and not much water. Soaking wet seeds or seedlings will die off, imagine having your feet in water all the time, not fun.

I start my seedlings near the furnace in our basement. You can also buy a waterproof grow mat that is like a heating pad but built for seeds starting. Don’t go and use your heating pad for this, OK?

When the seeds start to sprout, its time to move them under the grow lights. The seedlings do not have to be as warm once they are started. But is is very important to keep the seedlings directly under the lights, basically touching the bulbs. With our DIY grow light rig, you can slowly raise the grow light as the plants grow.

I have found putting seed trays in the window doesn’t work. The plants get very leggy and top heavy. When you transplant them, they fall over in the wind. Your experience may be different, as I live in New England, where the winter light is poor at best.

It’s OK that the leaves touch the bulbs of the grow light

For the grow light, we use regular fluorescent bulbs, not the expensive lights. For seed starting, this works fine.

You don’t want to over-water your seedlings. This can cause mold and fungus to grow and will kill the young plants. Best is slightly moist to slightly dry. Many of the seed starting trays have a wicking mat under the seed pots, and this works pretty good. Watering from underneath instead of over the plants is best. I do not mist the plants.

I use a prepared seed starting mix, I don’t make my own, too much work, I think. Do not use regular potting soil or soil from your garden. You can get Clyde’s Planner here.

February 24, 2016
Natural Weed Control in the Vegetable Garden – GF Video

Want to keep weeds down without spraying? Natural weed control is the way to go using this woven weed fabric. This video is an update to our previous how to control weeds video, showing how the weed fabric has held up to 6 years of New England weather.

I’m using the term natural weed control in a broad sense here, not wanting to get into the weeds about whether using a plastic material is natural. But rather in the sense that we are not using chemical weed killer, and by depriving the weed seeds of light, we keeping the weeds down in the garden.

This was purchased from a local greenhouse supply, you can buy the weed fabric online also. I’ve seen this fabric used as the floor of greenhouses and nursery yards. The fabric comes in rolls, and my neighbor got a friend to sew the fabric into a one giant piece. Each fall, the plants are pulled up and the fabric is rolled up and stored in the barn.

Large cement blocks hold down the edges of the fabric, and bricks are interspered between the plant rows throughout the garden to keep it from blowing up and away. To plant seedlings in the fabric, a propane torch is used to create holes. The torch singes the edges of the plastic, keeping it from fraying.

This natural weed control method works great for squash cucumbers, and whatever other vines you want to grow. It makes it much easier to harvest squash when the plants aren’t covered in weeds. It also makes it easier to spot damage by insects – watch our squash vine borer treatment videos.

This weed fabric is UV stable, meaning it is resistant to the sunlight degrading the material. If you use regular plastic sheeting, it will break down in the sunlight. You can see us use black plastic mulch in this tomato video.

Questions or comments? Let us know below.
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September 14, 2015
Troy Bilt Flex Review – GF Video

After using the Flex system all summer, here is our Troy Bilt Flex review video. We used the lawnmower and pressure washer attachments with the Flex power base around the house, here’s our take on it.

Note: This is a Sponsored Post sponsored. Troy Bilt sent me the Flex and compensated me for my time, but all opinions are my own

The GardenFork Troy Bilt Flex Review

I like the Troy Bilt Flex concept of one engine that connects to multiple pieces of outdoor power equipment. Its much easier to maintain one engine than 4 or 5 of them every year.

The power base has a 208cc engine with ample power to run everything that attaches to it. I like that the engine has an oil dipstick and an easy oil drain plug, plus a solid gas cap. The wheels are air filled knobby tires and the power base is self propelled. The handles fold back onto the unit for space saving storage, a nice feature.

The lawn mower has a 28″ wide deck, which is 8″ wider than most walk behind mowers. The front wheels are solid and can be set to free wheel or lock straight for when you are mowing on inclines. Two blades under the deck work nicely. I used the deck in mulching mode, but you can set it for side discharge or you can order a grass collection bag for it.

The pressure washer is quite nice, it will do everything I will ever need a pressure washer to do. It has 5 quick connect nozzles and can generate 3,000 psi of power. You can attach a hose to the pump for cleaning solution injection. I really like that it has a 40′ hose on it. I need to wash the clapboard on our 2 story house, and I don’t have to buy an additional length of hose to reach the 2nd story. This will come in handy if you are washing down large equipment.

The Troy Bilt Flex also has a snowblower and leaf blower attachments that we did not test. I don’t blow our leaves, and it being summer, well, no snow.

August 11, 2015
Plant A Window Flower Box – GF Video
Learn here how to plant a window flower box, like the one we built in a previous DIY video. Watch as we show a few tips for window box plantings. The first tip: simple is good. Here we go!

A few things to keep in mind in planning how to plant a window flower box
- Choose heat tolerant plants, especially if these window boxes are on the sunny side of the house.
- Use a good quality potting soil with a time release fertilizer.
- Water window boxes regularly, they will dry out faster than you think.
For this window box, we used some shade plants as this side of our house is shady most of the day. The few hours of sunlight are ok on these guys. Plus its on ground level, so its easy to water – a big plus not having to haul water upstairs.

Here’s what Erin, of The Impatient Gardener, has to say about window box flower design:

The more window boxes you have, the simpler the design should be. Window boxes are great but they are, as Tim Gunn would say, “a lot of look.” If there are too many colors or textures going on, your house is going to look like the little shop of horrors. Keep your plant choices to one, maybe two or three at an absolute maximum (and then only if they relate closely to each other, such as a light pink and a dark pink petunia) and then plant every box the same. I know it’s hard to pick just a few plants when there are so many great ones around, but pick one or two this year then do something totally different next year. Just don’t do it all at the same time.

Erin also suggests moving away from sweet potato vines, which do appear in our flower box video.

Better than most anything I’ve said yet. But then Erin is more of the designer kind of person than I am. I make stuff. Like flower boxes:
July 27, 2015
How To Harvest Potatoes – GF Video

Here’s how we harvest potatoes. It isn’t rocket science, its just dirt. Watch our how to video first.

Like I said, its not rocket science to harvest potatoes. The most important thing is to not pierce the potatoes when harvesting them. If you use a shovel or gardenfork, you may pierce them. No big deal, just cook those pierced potatoes for dinner tonight.

I think the best tool to harvest potatoes is your hands. Gloves help. Most of us don’t have massive rows of potatoes, so hands work pretty good. Besides, we have them nearby. Just add gloves.

Storing potatoes is harder than harvesting potatoes. For best storage, the potatoes need to be mature. Dig up a potato and see if the skin rubs off easily. If it does, the potato is not mature. You could still harvest potatoes at this point, but they would be for cooking in the near term.

To store them long term, you need to ‘cure’ them. Two weeks of dark storage at high humidity, about 80-90%, and then 40-45F at high humidity. A cool basement may be a good place for storage, check the humidity level first. Cook up any damaged potatoes, they can ruin a crop if left in storage. Learn more about potato curing here.

What are your thoughts? Suggestions? Let us know below:

June 23, 2015
Hilling Potatoes How To – GF Video

Hilling Potatoes is the middle step when you grow and harvest potatoes. Not sure what hilling potatoes is? Watch our how to video and read on.

Hilling Potatoes, what is it?

Potatoes, the crop, grow along the stem of the potato plant. When you plant your potatoes – video here – you plant them 6″ deep in the soil. To get a better crop, once the plants grow above the soil line, and are about 12″ high, you add about 6″ of soil along the potato plant stem. ( you can add more soil, if you want, its subjective) This adding of soil along the plant stem is called hilling.

We use raised beds, so hilling potatoes is easy, we remove some of the soil in the potato bed, then dig down 6″ to plant the seed potatoes. When its time for potato hilling, we add some sort of fence alongside the raised bed, and add soil, burying the stems of the potato plants.

You can use different materials to hill. Straw, compost, leaves, soil, or a mix of all this. With straw you may get mice burrowing into it, so keep an eye on that.

If you have a long planting season, you may be able to hill the potatoes twice, and get a larger crop. We aren’t able to do this, being in New England. We’ve also found that hilling potatoes much past 6-8″ doesn’t yield many more potatoes. Your results may be different, that just the way gardening is.

June 18, 2015
How to Grow Potatoes – GF Video

Learn to grow potatoes in this video, and in the following videos we show how to hill potatoes and how to harvest them. Growing potatoes is not hard, but there are a few terms you need to be familiar with. We’ll go through them below.

How to grow potatoes – step by step

Potatoes are best grown from what are called seed potatoes. At first, I didn’t know what that was, then I realized seed potatoes are just like regular potatoes, but they have gone to seed, in a way. They usually have little sprouts coming out of them, kinda like flowers or vegetables that have gone to seed. Hence the term seed potato. One big difference that you may want to look for is what’s called certified seed potatoes. This means they have gone through some sort of inspection process to be certified free of disease.

Seed potatoes can also be some potatoes you find in the back of your vegetable drawer that have started to sprout. Yes, you can grow these. They may not grow out to be amazing, but they will probably work. Many people find potatoes growing in their compost pile, because they tossed some old potatoes in there. And then you know what’s going to happen.

Some people will cut a seed potato into two or more pieces. I do. You want at least two ‘eyes’ or sprouts on each piece you carve. You can either plant these directly or allow the cuts to dry overnight.

Potatoes are usually grown in a trench, or if you are using a raised bed like we do, you would remove some of the soil in the bed. This is to prepare for hilling the potatoes. Plant the potatoes 6″ below the soil level in the trench, with most of the potato eyes pointed up.

Cover the seed potatoes and water them in. They will take a week or so to pop up out of the soil.

This is the first of our how to grow and harvest potatoes video series. Watch the next video here:

June 18, 2015
Troy Bilt Flex Review, One Engine Goes A Long Way

Here’s my Troy Bilt Flex review after using the Flex Power Base and the Wide Area Mower and Pressure Washer around the GardenFork Testing Grounds. The testing grounds, otherwise known as my yard, are typical of what your average homeowner has: grass, trees, some weeds, dogs.

Full Disclosure: Troy Bilt has compensated me for my time and provided me with their products. Opinions are mine own, and I don’t work with companies that aren’t a good fit for me or the GardenFork audience. More info here.

I’ve known the Troy-Bilt brand for many years. Their rear tine rototillers are the best, I think, and make life easy, especially if you’ve ever wrestled with a front tine tiller.

So when I was asked if I’d like to try out Troy Bilt’s new Flex system, I signed on. The delivery truck brought 3 boxes of Flex components, and I got 4 free wood pallets from the truck driver. Neat.

Attachments snap on to Flex Power Base

The Troy-Bilt Flex Review

Here’s the way I describe the Flex system: Its all based on a power unit that a bunch of different tools snap onto. The Flex base is like the rear half of a walk behind self propelled snowblower with a PTO out the front that snaps into several different attachments. I like the idea of having one power source and a bunch of outdoor equipment attachments. So I only have to maintain one engine, not an engine for every outdoor power tool in the garage. Plus, you save on garage storage space – the attachments have a smaller footprint – making it all easier to store.

Power Base on left, Mower deck on right

If you’ve ever been on a working farm, all the tractors have a PTO (power take off) shaft on the back and sometimes front to run different machines, this is the same concept for the Flex line.

Right now Troy-Bilt has mower, snow thrower, pressure washer, and leaf blower attachments for the power base, I’m told a log splitter and a few other attachments are in the works. I’d really like that log splitter, it would make fast work of the pines I’ve been dropping for next winter’s sap season.

I chose the Wide Area Mower and the Pressure Washer attachments to test out. The back of my clapboard house has mold growing on it, so this was perfect. We’ll be making a video showing the power washing and mowing this summer.

First I snapped on the mower deck.

What I like about the Troy-Bilt Flex Wide Area Mower:

It feels solid. This is kinda intangible, I know, but you know how some mowers just feel cheap? This doesn’t, it has good feel and nice power.

The power wheels are better, they are pnuematic, meaning they have air in them instead of solid plastic wheels of many self-propelled walk behinds. The rig powers nicely through the lawn. The drive system is robust, unlike many self-propelled mowers that have a small belt that powers the wheels.

The mower deck is 28″ wide, so I’m already saving time from my 20″ wide walk behind mower. Rough math tells me that every 3 passes with the Flex is 4 passes with my smaller mower.

The front wheels spin free, so you can make surprisingly tight turns for such a large mower deck. You can also lock the wheels for when you are mowing on hills for better control.

Front wheels free spin or lock straight

The Flex powers through the yard at a nice clip with enough power to go up a moderate hill. The lever that controls the speed of the wheels takes a few minutes to master, the low end of the range is short, so when you grab the lever, it starts moving faster than you expect at first. You should wear ear protection, the Flex mower isn’t super loud, but it all adds up.

For additonal info on the Flex mower and more, check out their website here.

28″ wide deck = less mowing

I then worked with the Pressure Washer attachment. Here’s where the advantages of the Flex system become clear. I don’t have to own a pressure washer that has its own engine, this pressure washer just snaps onto the Flex base. One less engine to maintain.

The pressure washer comes with 5 spray nozzles and 40′ of hose, plenty to get up to the 2nd floor of your house and wash the siding. It pumps 3,000 psi, which is more than enough for what you all are doing around the house. I used a friend’s power washer a while back and it was made mostly of plastic, this isn’t. Plus I like the hose rack, its large enough to store all of the hose, unlike some other washers I’ve used where the hose storage never works.

I know GardenFork is all about ‘done is better than perfect’, but sometimes the details matter, and the photo below makes that clear to me. When I put gas in the Flex tank, I saw the cap was chained, and the chain was metal, not plastic. It’s not something many would notice, but that tells me the people who designed this designed it to last.

I’ll be doing a Troy Bilt Flex Review video this summer, where we power wash one of the plywood boats, wash the back of the house, and power through my lawn in 2/3 the time it takes with the smaller mower I own.

UPDATE: here’s the video review of the FLEX:

To read more about the Troy Bilt Flex and other outdoor power equipment, here is their website, plus:

Rochelle of Pith + Vigor reviewed Troy-Bilt’s new Bronco Axis Vertical Tine tiller, which I tested out, and its a nice one.

Kenny of Veggie Gardening Tips also wrote a Troy Bilt Flex review here.

Erin of The Impatient Gardener wrote about the Troy Bilt XP Horse Lawn Tractor. Note the cup holder. nice.

Kim of Sand and Sisal reviewed the Troy Bilt 4 cycle trimmer that has a ton of attachments. I got to use this gear when we went to meet Troy Bilt, and its a nice set of tools.

How To Sharpen Lawn Mower Blades – GF Video

June 9, 2015
Cardboard Seed Starting Pots – DIY Video
These cardboard seed starting pots are made from paper towel tubes. Biodegradable plant pots made from stuff in your house. Watch this DIY video about how to make the seed starting pots and get more info below, plus links to our other seed starting videos.

You can buy seed starting pots, but I like to make them with stuff I already have. Our neighbor, Priscilla, who we call ‘The Egg Lady’ because we get our eggs from her, has a huge garden. She grows many heirloom tomatoes, in addition to some stuff I have never heard of. Unique string beans, heirloom flowers, plus she has several apple orchard around the property. Priscilla is like me, always wanting to share cool stuff she has discovered or found or grown.

Plus she has a menagerie of animals, horses, turkeys, guinea hens, cats, and dogs. You can hear Priscilla on GardenFork Radio here.

I had been saving cardboard tubes for her and then one day she showed me what she was doing with all the tubes. So I wanted to share this all with you.

Couple of important things to remember when using starting plants from seed:
- Cardboard seed starting pots are not for long term use.
- Take care not to over-water them. Too much water invites mold and fungus, as a result, bad things when you are starting plants.
- Don’t use potting soil to start seeds. Buy seed starting mix.
- You can also use coir, which is shredded coconut fiber, mixed with vermiculite and perlite.
- Do not add fertilizer to seed starting mixes.
- Use a grow light rig. Learn how to build a DIY Grow Light here.
The height of the seed starting pot depends on the plants you are growing. Taller plants need more root space, therefore, make those pots larger. Salad greens can be grown in a 2″ high pot.

Here are some of our hoop house cold frames for when its time to move the seedlings in to the garden:

So there you go, let me know any improvements or suggestions and how you start seeds in the comments below.

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March 4, 2015
Cheap Cold Frame How To – DIY GF Video
Here’s a cheap cold frame you can make out of scrap lumber and a window. In this video I’ll show you how to build the cold frame in a few hours. With this rig, you can do some winter gardening, and of course we have some videos on that, the links are at the end of this post.

Some enhancements I’ve done with we made the video:
- I painted the cold frame with outdoor latex paint, 2-3 coats is good, as plywood does not like to get wet, you know.
- I split open some old garden house and slipped it on the bottom of the cold frame to keep the wood out of the dirt.
- I’ve grown vegetables in winter for several years. Neat.
I’m betting you can find enough scrap lumber to make this a recycle or freecycle project. The wood doesn’t have to be finish grade, and one of my pieces was warped, but it worked anyway. The hinges I had laying around, and the only thing I had to buy was the thermal vent.

What grows well in a cold frame? I grow cold hard salad greens and kale. Kale will grow in snow. I’ve dug it out of the garden and its still green in February. You can buy winter salad green mixes from the seed companies. Mache is a neat green that not many people grow, the seeds are kinda tiny.

If you don’t get the auto vent, you will have to open up the frame on warm days. You will be surprised how hot it can get in a our cheap cold frame, even if it didn’t cost us any money to build.

The biggest problem with this rig is the glass. It can break. That tree limb could have landed anywhere, but it landed on top of your super cheap cold frame instead. I have replaced the glass once. Luckily I had some spare windows that I salvaged a piece of glass out of. You might try putting some screening over the glass to protect it. Just a thought.

Below are some suggested books for winter gardening, let me know your thoughts.

Watch all of our hoop house videos here.

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February 9, 2015
Cold Frame Gardening at BBG – DIY GF Video

Cold frame gardening can be done in the Northern climes, as we see at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We made this winter gardening video at their demonstration garden in December. They were harvesting greens like arugula and mache. Watch the video and see for yourself. Below are some book recommendations for winter gardening.

The cold frame plans for this set are easy to build. The dimensions depend on the size of the windows. You may already have some windows, or a neighbor may be replacing their windows and you can grab a few of them. Or pick them up from a garage sale or look on the web for free stuff.

The cold frames in this video were built with 2×8 or 2×10 lumber, but you could use something less thick and it will be ok, i think. I like how they had the cold frames next to each other, so each frame helped insulate the one next to it. You could use scrap hinges off some old doors, its a ‘use what you got’ kind of project.

For cold frame gardening, its best to orient the cold frame so it faces south, if you are in the northern hemisphere. This cold frame is manually vented, meaning you vent them by opening them up and closing them yourself. You could install the thermatic vent we have used in our hoop house greenhouse plans if you like.

What to grow when gardening in winter? Cold tolerant plants, mainly salad greens work well. Several seed suppliers sell winter salad mixes, they will do well until it becomes just too cold. But then those plants will revive in early spring. Many times there is enough moisture in the ground to keep the plants watered, but keep an eye on them. If the cold frame gets too warm, the soil can dry out. And you’d be surprised at just how hot a cold frame can get in winter.

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February 9, 2015
Hoop House Cold Frame #2 – DIY GF Video

This is the second DIY Hoop House Cold Frame we have built in our video series. Easy to build, this mini greenhouse allows you to grow plants in winter. Watch the video here, plans and photos are below as well as links to our other DIY Hoop House Cold Frame Videos.

This cold frame uses a wire mesh that’s usually used for concrete, but it works really well as a cold frame form to hold the plastic up. I like how it works
You can buy this concrete reinforcing wire at a local lumber supply yard. It comes in two thicknesses, you want the thinner gauge wire, the thick wire is too much, I think. This wire also comes in rolls, but the it is a pain to work with. The mesh I bought was 10’ x 5’.

To cut the wire mesh we use a right angle grinder with a metal cutting disc. Be sure to wear ear and eye protection and wear gloves while you’re handling this material, it can cut your skin.

Be sure the cut end of the wire mesh faces the plywood end, else the plastic can get sliced by the sharp ends of the wire. You can put pieces of old garden hose along the end of the wire mesh where the plastic bends over to form the end wall, as well as on the plywood end to protect the plastic from the hard edges of the wire and wood.

But you can build this! It’s not hard and I really like it. Another great version of the hoop house cold frames that we’ve built, we have a whole series of them – link here – and every time we make one we get better and better. The super cool part is that you can extend your growing season in the fall and you can use one of these cold frames to warm up the soil in your vegetable beds in late winter and plant seeds even earlier than you could normally. Cold frame hoop houses are especially good for salad greens, radishes, sugar snap peas – plants that are cold tolerant.

You can use scrap wood to tie the corners together, or use brackets.

The automatic vent that we use is kind of a specialty item but that they’re not that expensive. Here is the link to buy it.

You could put one vent in or you could put in two vents. With two vents you would put plywood at both ends of this cold frame. Having a vent on both sides allows more warm air to exit. Cold frames can get quite hot, you don’t realize how much solar energy the sun has even in the winter. You will need to vent the hoop house, you can go out on sunny days and manually vent it if you want by lifting up the cold frames, but I’m not there all the time. So I like the automatic vents.
Have you made a cold frame? Do you have anymore questions? Pease leave them in the comments below.

My cold frame experiences have been greatly influenced by these books by Eliot Coleman and Niki Jabbour.

Four-Season Farm Year Round Vegetable Gardener (affiliate links)

Watch more of our hoop house cold frame plans videos here.

PVC Cold Frame Hoop House #3 – DIY GF Video

February 7, 2015
PVC Cold Frame Hoop House #3 – DIY GF Video
Easy to build PVC Cold Frame Hoop House is a mini greenhouse that allows you to grow salad greens and cold tolerant vegetables into the winter, and get a head start on early spring planting. This hoop house is more resistant to heavy snow than our previous versions, listed below.

This is version 3.0 of our cold frame hoop house. What I like about this one is that it’s a taller than our previous cold frames, so you could start to grow tall plants like kale or start sunflowers earlier in the spring.

A couple things to keep in mind while you’re building this hoop house, especially if you are using this on raised beds. You want this hoop house to fit just inside the walls of your raised bed. I made this mistake when I made my first hoop house, I didn’t measure how wide my raised bed was and the cold frame didn’t fit exactly. Experience has once again taught me something. The frame fits just inside the wooden sides of the raised bed and it doesn’t have to have a super tight seal with the soil, you do want some air exchange in and out. What the hoop house is doing is moderating temperature. When it gets really cold outside, it’s going to be cold in there but it will extend your growing season.

Consider planting some cold tolerant greens in August, I like a salad green mix that sold by Fedco seeds. They have a fall and winter lettuce greens mix and that’s worked really well for me.

One thing I did not mention in the video is that where the plastic meets the plywood ends of your hoop house, the plywood can cause the plastic to tear and so you might want to put something soft around the edge of the plywood. If you have some old garden hose you could split the garden hose open and run that along the edge of the plywood and that would go a long way toward making the plastic such that it wouldn’t rip.

For this 8′ x 4′ cold frame I used:
- Two 2×3 8′ long studs
  Two 2×3 studs cut to 45″ long
  One 1×2 8′ stud, you could also use a 2×2
  4 metal angle iron brackets
  3 pieces of 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC cut to 6′ long
  1 1/4″ and 1 5/8″ drywall screws
  Two pieces of 4’x4′ thin plywood. You could also cut down a 4’x8′ piece.
  3 or 4 mil plastic, i used a roll of 10′ x 25′, which is enough for two hoop houses.
  Two thermatic vents, available here http://amzn.to/2Cg81fg
  Staple gun
Using the angle brackets, build a 4′ x 8′ wood frame, make sure the shorter pieces of 2×3 wood (the 45″ pieces) are inside of the larger pieces, so the outside dimensions are 48″ x 96″

I cut the plywood ends to match the arc of the pvc hoops. Take one of the hoops and curve it into the wood frame at the end of the frame, and use this to sketch the arc on the plywood ends, it does not have to be perfect.

My hoop house cold frame gardening has been greatly influenced by Eliot Coleman and Niki Jabour.

Four-Season Harvest The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Watch all of our hoop house videos here.
November 6, 2014
Pallet Compost Bin Plans & Photos

Here’s a neat pallet compost bin we made in an hour. My pallet projects obsession continues, lately I’ve been looking way too much at pallets sitting on a sidewalk and thinking what can I make out of those?

Charlie Pup and I went out to dump kitchen compost in our pallet compost bin. She sat for a photo you can see at the end of this post. I wanted to follow up on how our compost bin has been doing.

So far so good is the verdict. While the wood has weathered well, we haven’t filled it up completely, as this bin is mainly for food compost. I do drop stuff from the vegetable garden as well.

I have found that I can build one of these pallet compost bins without the metal brackets. With some care and long wood screws, you can align the pallets at the corners. Then you can sink in some screws between them to join it together. But if you have some spare brackets of some sort, by all means use them. Use what you got!

Keep an eye out for old pieces of pipe or metal fencing, because you can use these to drive down in between the pallet sides to keep anchor the bin. Two of these pipes seems to work well for me. I built one of these up at my friend’s cabin to keep the Labradors from feasting on his food scraps. The bear has not torn through his compost bin yet it has kept the dogs out.

Build The Bin with photos and video

Here is the original pallet compost bin video with some other information if you want to check it out, below are photos of how to build the pallet compost bin.

Pipes add stability

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October 24, 2014
5 Great Seed Starting How To Videos
How to start seeds? Watch these seed starting videos from the GardenFork video archive.

Simple Seed Starting Pots Video

Cardboard Pots Video

Origami Newspaper Pots

Our Super Easy Grow Light How To Video

Here’s how to build the grow light stand for your cheap grow lights:

Some Seed Starting Thoughts from Eric
- Do Not Overwater Seedlings or seed trays.
- Damp sponge consistency is good. Wet is not good.
- Keep the grow lights right on top of the seedlings, they tops of the plants should be touching or almost touching the bulbs.
- Keep the grow lights on 16 hours a day.
Not enough light and over-watering are the two biggest mistakes people make when seed starting. I don’t believe in using a window to start or grow seedlings, the weak light makes the plants leggy and weak, in my opinion.

If you want to save money and avoid having more plastic pots around, consider using cardboard or newspaper seed starting pots. The videos above show how easy it is to make these.

I use coir as a seed starting medium, I avoid using peat moss, which isn’t the most renewable resource we have. We seem to have a ton of coconut shells and fiber around. With coconut water being the new cupcake and all…

I add vermiculite and perlite to the coir fiber to give it some air and drainage. Easy enough to buy this stuff in the local garden shop. The exact amount is not important, use what you got, but you want a majority of the seed starting mix to be coir.

Break down the coir bricks in warm water. It helps to break them up with a hammer or some sort of smashing type object. I tend to add too much water to the coir bricks, and end up draining off a lot of it.

What are your seed starting practices? Thoughts? Let us know below:
February 6, 2014