Garden Know-how: Extend Your Growing Season

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For taller tunnels to protect tomatoes or other crops in the fall, concrete reinforcing wire will work better than the lighter weight welded-wire fencing. If you want to use the plastic for both spring and fall protection, use lengths of iron re-bar to hold down the plastic edges, rather than folding under and taping. This will allow you to easily remove the plastic during the hot months when it is not needed.

— Cheryl Long

Create Classic Cold Frames

A stationary cold frame is invaluable for hardening off tender seedlings, or you can make a movable one. (“Cold frame” refers to any unheated boxed-in growing area with a clear glass or plastic top to admit light and trap solar heat.) Opt for a well-built permanent cold frame if you have a great site, such as a south-facing slope for an earth-bermed version. Otherwise, it’s handy to be able to pop a portable frame over a bed of direct-sown crops for a week or two, and then move it to a place where it can serve as a halfway house for seedlings started indoors.

A wood frame covered with plastic sheeting makes a decent cold frame, or you can use hay bales (see illustration) for the walls. An old window still in its frame, with opening and closing hardware intact, makes a great top, and I’m happy as pie with the $5 shower door I found at my local Habitat for Humanity thrift store. Found items like these often come in strange sizes, so it’s best to get a top before you make a frame. You might need to get creative with hinges, too, especially if the window or door has a metal frame. Pieces of old bicycle inner tube stapled or screwed into place make good, inexpensive hinges. The wind won’t rip off your cold frame’s top if it’s secured to the base (when closed) or to sturdy wood stakes (when open) with screen-door hooks and eyes.

Other good season-stretching strategies include wrapping the outside of a tomato cage with clear plastic, or stapling bubble wrap over the top of a cardboard box with its top flaps folded in for added stability, and its bottom flaps folded out and held in place with bricks or stones. Use what you have! Until it got too nasty to keep, I used an old mattress pad for quickie overnight plant protection, and a friend is determined to find the best way to transform used Styrofoam take-out boxes into cloches. When it comes to inviting spring into your garden a few weeks early, a little imagination can go a long way.

Solar-charged Hot Water Bottles

Water-filled containers painted flat black absorb solar warmth during the day and release it at night, so they are worthwhile additions to your season-stretching toolbox. The squared sides of half-gallon milk jugs make them easy to stack into the back wall of a cold frame, or you can include a black water-filled barrel in your cold frame’s design.

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