Me and my sweetie went a little crazy ordering seeds a couple of weeks ago. When we combined households last year our seed collections expanded dramatically! I added a lot of perennials, herbs and flowers to the mix, he brought a ton of tomatoes, peppers and squash. But somehow, it seemed we still needed more seeds.

And so now we need a new cold frame! My four DIY jobbies aren’t quite enough. After starting all those seeds, I still have 28 additional seed packs to start. And so, honey bunny and I wandered out into the yard looking at options for an additional cold frame system. We had several panes of glass, a bunch of big rocks and some bricks. Drawing inspiration from an article in Mother Earth News on Chinese Greenhouses, we decided to use the thermal mass from the rocks and bricks to form 3 sides of the cold frame. They should hold heat from our sunny days to keep the starts warm during cold nights. The top and front will be glass.

We, or should I say, he, got a good start on this over the weekend and both of us are psyched. The finished project will be a combo cold frame and garden bed which we’ll use to plant a few things like lettuce that would be useful a bit closer to the house. Which is an important principle of permaculture – keep the things you need to access more often closer to the house. The cold frame and raised bed will be in our zone 1, a few steps outside our front door.

Cheerio and until next time!