Garden Know-How: Extend Your Growing Season

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Plastic-covered tunnels make perfect mini-greenhouses for early spring planting.
Plastic-covered tunnels make perfect mini-greenhouses for early spring planting.
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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.
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.
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Straw or hay bales can easily be combined with an old window to make a nifty cold frame.
Straw or hay bales can easily be combined with an old window to make a nifty cold frame.
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Wall O’ Waters are circular cloches, 18 inches tall and 18 inches wide, made of connected, translucent plastic tubes that you fill with water. They absorb and store daytime warmth and moderate cold while providing dependable wind protection.
Wall O’ Waters are circular cloches, 18 inches tall and 18 inches wide, made of connected, translucent plastic tubes that you fill with water. They absorb and store daytime warmth and moderate cold while providing dependable wind protection.

As late winter days lengthen, resourceful gardeners scurry to collect cloches, erect plastic-covered tunnels and put together a workable cold frame. Using season-stretching devices such as these can add four to six weeks to the front end of your growing season (and many of them will be handy again in the fall).

You can make an amazing array of season-stretching garden gear from found or recycled materials, and you won’t have to rely on electric grow lights to get delectable spring greens in time for Easter or have the first ripe tomatoes on your block. Creating season-extending equipment is fun because you’re working with free solar energy. The trick is to come up with simple structures that can withstand strong winds, shed rain and snow, and absorb and store solar warmth for the plants you’re protecting.

Physical shelter from blustery weather will help any plant, but cool-natured plants such as lettuce, spinach and cabbage-family crops don’t need as much heat as tender tomatoes or peppers — especially at night. Simple plastic cloches or plastic-covered cold frames raise nighttime temperatures 4 to 5 degrees, but you can double that number by throwing on an insulating blanket in the evening. Or triple the protection by adding black water bottles, which release stored daytime warmth after the sun goes down.

Try Creative Cloches

Low, transparent individual plant protectors, called cloches, are the season-stretchers of choice for plants spaced more than 8 inches apart, such as tomatoes and peppers. Most gardeners keep a stash of cloches made from translucent plastic milk jugs or clear plastic bottles. I pick up roomy plastic juice jugs with handles at my local recycling center.

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