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Are you ready to get a jump - start on the garden season?With a cold frame , you’re able to get started now . A dusty frame tackle the sun ’s heat before it ’s warm enough to permit unprotected seedling growing outside .
fundamentally , it consists of agardenbed surround by an angled inning and covered with a dose of glass . All but the most heat energy - loving vegetables ( like tomatoes and common pepper ) can be bulge out in a insensate frame . The bounteous advantage of growing with a cold frame is that your plant can get in the territory right out , without endure the unnecessary tenseness of have their ancestor contract in trays .
The following excerpt is fromFour - Season HarvestbyEliot Coleman . It has been adapted for the web .
( All exemplification by Kathy Bray . Cover photo courtesy of Barbra Damrosch . )
Your cold frame can serve as a greenhouse for starting seedlings.
you could use it for all seedling that are transplanted except the early - natural spring sowings of heat - lovers such as tomatoes , pepper , and cuke . They should be started in a gay windowpane in the house . For all the others , the cold frame is an ideal place to start growing . Once you start out raising seedlings in the cold systema skeletale , you will incur it so simple and successful that you will never go back to flats on windowsills . Here ’s how to do it :
Spread potting mixing about two to three inch deep in whatever part of a frame you wish well to apply for seedling . secular 3 - inch boards around the edge as a border , then treat that area as if it were a flat : make line , cut down in equally spaced ejaculate , cover them shallowly , mark them with name and day of the month on a small stake , and water them gently with a okay sprinkler . The rows can be as close-fitting together as they would be in a flat . blank space semen evenly in the seeding row so they wo n’t be crowded . We always seek to avoid plant tenseness at all stages of growing . It takes a little more time , but the results are deserving it .
When the seedling are up , move them to an adjoining part of the skeleton , which also has a 2 column inch covering of pot mix over the soil . Do this as before long as you may manage the seedlings . Within reason , the youthful you transplant a seedling , the better . Dig under each one with a small , pointed dowel pin , lifting and relax the roots as you extract them from the soil . Always be gentle with seedling . Hold them by a leaf , not the prow , so you do n’t crush the vital parts if you squeeze too hard .
Poke hole out in the potting soil of the adjoining section with the dowel to make space for the root , then tuck them in light . A good distance for all seedling is 3 in aside . When they are large enough to transplant to the garden , use a knife to trim the soil into cubes with a seedling in the plaza of each . It is just like cutting a tray of brownies . If you check that the grunge is damp ( sprinkle if necessary before switch off ) , the blocks will nurse together nicely . you may use a bricklayer ’s or right-hand - angle trowel to slice underneath each cube , lift it out , and set it in a tray for transport to its lasting garden home .
There are many advantages to growing seedlings in a cold frame
No flat are necessary . There is no potting filth mess in the house . The seedlings will be fearless because the inhuman frame is not by artificial means stir up . Any additional curing off is well fulfill by opening the igniter more or less wider .
in conclusion , watering is more absolvitory , since your seedling are connect to the earth and they ca n’t dry out as quickly as they can in the limited confines of a flat . Thus , an episodic relapse in watering is not disastrous .
The medium transplanting from the seedling wrangle to the 3 - by-3 - inch spatial arrangement make transplant seedlings a two - step process . We think it ’s deserving the effort because the intermediate step has been find to excite increase root regrowth , result in slightly more vigorous transplants . you’re able to do it as a one - whole tone unconscious process by only starting out with the 3 - by-3 - column inch configuration and planting three seeds in each square . After they emerge , you flimsy to the good one in each public square and proceed as before .
With some crops , we use a Dutch idea called multiplants and seed four or more source in each square with no purpose of dilute them . This allow us to grow transplantation in groups rather than as singles . The onion craw will dish up as a safe example of how to go about it . Sow five ejaculate together . program for four of the seeds to germinate . When the onion seedlings are large enough to go to the garden , reduce out the blocks as usual and place them out at a spatial arrangement of 10 by 12 inches .
If you were growing single plant in rows they would be do 3 inch apart . Four industrial plant in a bunch every 12 inches in a run-in is the same average spatial arrangement as one plant every 3 inches . Each Allium cepa is allowed just as much total garden distance , and the yield is the same . The onion arise . together advertize each other aside gently and at harvest clip are lying in a serial publication of small circles rather than undivided row . If all the seeds germinate and there are five onion in each clump , that ’s no trouble .
In increase to onions , you may use the multiplant technique for early transplants of beets , broccoli , scratch , leek , scallions , and spinach . Not only is this organization more efficient because four plant can be transfer as cursorily as one , but it also can be used to control size when desired . A clunk of Brassica oleracea italica , for example , will render three or four small central promontory rather than one large one . For many families , the smaller building block size is more desirable .
Recommended Reads
Build Your Own Cold Frame : Get a leap on the Planting Season
Winter Gardening Without het Greenhouses
Four-Season Harvest
Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long , 2nd Edition
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