GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: cold frame video

Seed Starting in a Hoop House Cold Frame : DIY Video

Starting seeds in a hoop house cold frame is like putting a greenhouse on your vegetable bed. The hoop house warms the soil and then you drop seeds right into the soil. No transplanting or grow lights, no transplant shock. This is our cheap PVC hoop house that can be made with salvaged or recycled materials, and then you can grow vegetables in the hoop house. What I love is how the cold frame warms the soil to 15F above the ambient soil temperature.

Plants that do well for seed starting in a hoop house are those that are cold tolerant. What the cold frame offers is a warmer soil and air temperature, which aids in germination. Yes, peas can be planted in snow, but they germinate much better in slightly warmer soil, same for lettuces and cabbages like kale, just a bit warmer and they sprout better. For this video I put sugar snap pea seeds in and radish seeds. Radishes are one of those seeds that are kinda fail-safe, so you feel ok even if some of the other plants didn’t take as well.

We have several videos on how to build a hoop house cold frame and how to use a plastic greenhouse like this, here is the video of us building our first cheap hoop house. I think its key to have the thermally controlled vent, if it gets too hot, you might consider putting a vent on each end of the hoop house. The PVC we use in this cold frame could be salvaged or recycled from another project or job site. The plastic we use is 3 mil plastic from the hardware store. With care this plastic will last several years. In the middle of summer, I hang my hoop house on the back side of the woodshed, and the plastic stays in good shape for a few years.

Salad Greens Grow Really Well In A Hoop House

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April 9, 2013
Repair Of Our Hoop House Cold Frame : GF Video

Setting up our simple cheap hoop house greenhouse for seed starting. This PVC hoop house cold frame works well for us and it was easy to build, here is the video of us building our the hoop house. The hoop house greenhouse allows you to get a head start on planting vegetables and seed starting. We started this in February to start warming the soil. This can be made for free if you find some scrap leftover lumber and PVC pipe. This plan uses short lengths of PVC pipe, which you may find laying around your yard, or your neighbor’s yard.

My hoop house plans for this mini greenhouse are simple. Some 2x4s, some PVC pipe, and a piece of plywood. The thermal actuated vent keeps the hoop house from overheating. Link to buy the thermal greenhouse vents

I use 3 mil clear plastic from the hardware store, it lasts a few years with care. I hang our mini greenhouse on the back of a shed when i am not using it. To attach the plastic to it, I fold the plastic over on itself and use lots of staples. You could also use a piece of lath or thin wood to hold the plastic to the wood. For the ends, I staple the plastic to the plywood end with the thermal vent and then cut off the excess plastic. For the other end of the cold frame hoop house, I simply bunch up the plastic and staple it to the 2×4.

After a few days on your vegetable bed, this portable greenhouse will start warming the soil. Its amazing how warm it is inside the hoop house compared to the outside temperature. We have a video showing how a hoop house greenhouse can defrost your garden soil coming soon.

In the video, the plywood I used for the end of the greenhouse, OSB, is not the best kind of plywood for outdoor uses. Use a better piece of plywood and paint it with a few coats of latex paint, it will last much longer if its painted.

Click here to watch our How To Build a Hoop House Cold Frame Video

Click here to watch How to build a cold frame video.

Learn how to grow food year round, read Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest book and Nikki Jabour’s Year Round Vegetable Gardener.

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Do you use a hoop house greenhouse? let us know comments or questions below:

April 2, 2013
Grow Vegetables in Winter with a Cold Frame : GF video

Cold frames have been used to grow vegetables in winter since glass was invented. Winter gardening is made possible with cold frames and hoop houses. Using a recycled window, we built a cold frame last year – see our how to build a cold frame video here – and had good success growing vegetables in the winter and starting plants early in the spring using the cold frame.

This year I took volunteer plants that had sprung up around the garden: Mustard Greens, Swiss Chard, Garlic, Chives, and parsley and transplanted these plants into the cold frame. These plants all do well in colder weather, so we’ll have some nice greens for salads in the middle of winter. How cool is that?

The key to using a cold frame to grow vegetables is controlling the temperature inside the cold frame. We use an automatic vent that has louvers that open at about 45F, letting hot air out of the cold frame. It is called a crawlspace vent at the hardware store. You can buy the automatic vent online here.

The recycled window we used is a single glaze, meaning it has only one sheet of glass, you can also use double glazed windows. As we say at GardenFork: Use what you got.

You can make a larger cold frame, aka a plastic hoop house greenhouse, by watching our hoop house video here.

Let us know your cold frame and hoop house tips and suggestions below, thx, eric.

November 13, 2012
Late Winter Gardening & Apple Tree Pruning : DIY Video

An early spring tour of the vegetable garden, where Eric talks about using a hoop house cold frame to get an early start on spring vegetable plants, and how to grow sugar snap peas, plus some of eric’s thoughts on how to prune fruit trees like the old apple tree in the yard. Plus the Labrador Retrievers, of course.

In this video we talked about how to make a cold frame hoop house, and you can see that DIY video on our site here

Buy the thermatic vents here: http://amzn.to/2zG4WjC

To learn more about how to start seeds, make seed starting plant pots, seed starting, and growing plants in seed starting trays, watch our video How to start seeds video here.
What are you doing to get a head start on the growing season, what season extenders are you using? Let us know below:

April 12, 2011
Winter Vegetable Gardening with cold frames GF Video

On Christmas Day we went out to the garden to take care of what we should have done in the fall. And we made a video about it. How unusual.

I’m a big fan of Eliot Coleman, and his book, The Four Season Harvest. Its full of a ton of information, one of the things that stuck with me is that South of France is on the same parallel, the 44th, as Eliot’s house in Maine. France grows vegetables in the winter, and we don’t. Or most of us don’t. Eliot does grow vegetables in winter. Check out his site here Eliot has a new book out on winter gardening, The Winter Harvest Handbook, which you can buy from your local bookstore or here.

I usually put a cold frame on one of our raised beds to grow cold hard greens in the late fall and early spring. I have yet to master Eliot’s methods of getting greens thru the winter. You can see our video on how to build a cold frame on this page of our site.

Watch this Gardenfork episode for more on plastic mulch, cold frames, and of course the Labradors.

December 29, 2009
Video: Cold Frame Plans from Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Last week we visited with Patty Hulse at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, who showed us the cold frames they built and use throughout the winter. Very nice. Thanks to my friend Tony, ( the man who knits ) for helping with the camera. An episode on knitting is in the works.

Greens growing in a cold frame at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

December 15, 2006