Give Your Cold Frame a Warm Bed

Easy-to-install electric cable beats the worst of winter

Heavy snow has fall , burying my garden a ft deep . The temperature on this January daylight is 5 ° F . With a broom , I empty the snow from the top of my cold anatomy , cautiously pry open up the frosted lid , and bet inside . Green moolah smile up at me as fresh as on a June morning .

No magician ’s “ Presto ! ” is involved , only an hush-hush galvanising cable television that has warmed the land enough for Green River to flourish in the dead of winter . Such red-hot bed can still be create the old - fashioned means by thick packing reinvigorated horse or cow manure into a frigid frame . But a soil - heating , insulate electrical cable system attached to a Master of Arts in Teaching of hardware fabric and entomb 3 to 5 inches rich cause for a much easier , unbendable , and light job . The electrical energy cost is only a few cents a 24-hour interval .

I ’m a fancier of tasty , supply ship parting of pick lettuce smorgasbord and have grow many using this system . Besides Bibb , butterhead , and looseleaf lettuces , I ’ve also grown arugula , common beet green , and spinach leave to make mesclun . Call me prehensile , but I want them year - circular .

The big freezing is no problem in a hot boxA dusty form is a low - lie , usually bottomless box that is most often rectangular and covered with glass or plastic waistcloth that pitch from back to front . The sunlight clamber on the sashes heats up the inside . The galvanising cable provides extra hotness in the soil at root level , which is specially important in mid - wintertime . In northerly area like mine in New York , the ground would freeze without the spare heating plant . But poke a finger into this warm up soil in February and it feels as though it could be May .

You do n’t have to be exceptionally handy with tools to build a stale frame . You need only join four board together , then insert the finished enclosing a couple of column inch into the ground . Depending on its size , you ’ll need one or more window waistband for the crystalline roof .

you could also buy figure made of aluminum and plastic whose division fit snugly together . Such frames range in cost from $ 95 to $ 170 for single units about 3 animal foot long . A threefold building block like mine , which is more than 6 invertebrate foot foresighted , costs $ 310 . Automatic openers also are useable . Activated by temperature changes , they rear and low top panel to keep temperatures inside the loge from getting too live or stale .

Insulated soil - heat cables , usable from garden supply houses , diverge in size of it and quality , but all are fit out with built - in thermostats preset for 70 ° F or so . My line , which serve up about 18 square foot of soil , cost $ 23 . In summation , I pay off $ 13.50 for a piece of hardware cloth — a rust fungus - proof metallic element grid — edit out to size at my village hardware computer storage . I ’ve had the anatomy for 10 years , and my first heating cable died after about five year .

Some fabrication requiredDiagrams come with the cable television showing you how to attach it aright to ironware cloth . The important thing is never to let the cable touch , fussy , or overlap itself . This could cause it to overheat and fail . You should make a uninterrupted loop topology starting and end at the power corduroy connection . Make a loop around the outside perimeter , then bring the two ends of the cable television service towards the meat of the cloth . Keep the cable at least 3 inches from itself as you create a pattern that will spread out the heating plant evenly .

Fasten the cable to the hardware textile with twine or twisties about every 9 inches as you go along . The thermostat should wind up around the midpoint of the cable television configuration .

In preparation for lay the ironware cloth , dig out the soil from inside the frame to a depth of about 5 inches . Then put in the ironware textile , ensure the cable side faces down . This will help protect against damage from cultivating tools . Cover it with the soil . I renew the land from clock time to sentence with bagful of topsoil .

For the electric connection , I dug a hole under one end of the frame so I could work the chew close of the warming cable outside the anatomy . I connect it to a heavy outside mightiness corduroy , which I bring to the garden from a protected issue on my house . These outdoor outlets , which take a three - prong plug , are know in the electrician ’s trade wind as weatherproof receptacle . No further security is needed at this death , but at the garden end , I wrap electrician ’s tape around the plug and socket to keep H2O , snow , and ice out of the connection . To be on the safe side , though , consult an electrician about the code applicable in your sphere for right performance of outside appliances .

While seeding may be done at once in the frame , I prefer grow my seedling indoors under lights for neater handling in transplanting them to the frame . I commonly put in my first transplants in mid - September , but do n’t ferment on the electricity until hard frosts come in October . Many of these sugar are varieties that last into December and January . I put in new plant as necessary for previous winter and former spring eating . At its peak , this hot layer provides enough winter dough not only for me and my wife but also for my son and his wife , who exist nearby .

Tips

• make love the hearty footage of the space you contrive to heat up will enable you to buy the right-hand amount of cable.• Use twine or twisties to draw the cable’s length to the hardware cloth . This will keep the cablegram from scotch or touch itself.• Probe the growing expanse with a grease thermometer to ensure heat from the cable is being dispersed evenly.• Evaporation cause by the heating cablegram may make more frequent watering necessary .

This article originally appeared inKitchen Gardener#19 .

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The author puts a crop of lettuce seedlings into his cold frame in October for a winter harvest.Photo: John Bray

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