Build a Cold Frame with Recycled Materials

Last night I was on a radio program and we were discussing fall gardening. What to plant, what not to plant, when to plant and so on. During the course of the interview, we began talking about how to protect plants in the colder months. Without hesitation I replied "use a cold frame".

A cold frame is a great way to extend your gardening season well in to the cooler months. It works similar to a green house, however it is lower to the ground, which in turn, at night, will keep the warmer air closer to the plants. It will also have a means to ventilate easily so that if it does get warm during the day, you simply open up the ventilation and let the heat out, which helps prevent "burning" your plants.

Here is a great step by step instructional that I found on building your own cold frame out of some recycled material. It's easy to build, and if you have some basic skills, you should get this done in no time.

Here are the Step by Step instructions

Labor Day has Passed, Now onto Some Fall Gardening

Many vegetable gardeners get bummed out because Labor Day marks the end of summer and that usually means, cooler weather is not too far off, translating into the end of growing fresh fruits and vegetables. However, gardening in the cooler months is just as fun as the summer months.

The cooler months yield a chance to grow all sorts of great veggies. Carrots, radish, kale, peas, lettuce, spinach, beets, turnips and broccoli make up just a few of the many choices you have. Throw in a cold frame over your garden beds and your growing possibilities become nearly limitless.

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Of course, growing tomatoes, beans, peppers and cucumbers more than likely won’t work in your area when the temps begin to drop, autumn is great time to continue to grow.

For many of you, like me, you will need to remove some of your summer plants. If they are still producing, you of course would not do this, but if they are not, now is a good time, to go ahead and discard them into your compost pile.

Now that you have an area to plant in, you will want to replenish the ground with plenty of nutrients, and the best way to do that, is mixing in some of your finished compost. The more you have to mix in, the better off you will be.

Of course, if you don’t have enough compost to go around, or you did not get one started this year, there are plenty of organic fertilizers on the market that you can use to help along with your growing process.

One of my favorites is Annie Haven’s Authentic manure tea bags. They are small tea bag looking products filled with seasoned manure that you steep in water, then water your plants with. It works great, and is fairly inexpensive for how much use you get out of the tea bags.

So before you give up on your gardening for the season and grab some of those vegetable seeds that work well in the early spring, because they are going to do great in the fall as well!

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the monthly Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Have you planned that fall vegetable garden yet?

The summer months are getting oh so much closer to the end. While the heat and humidity may not support that claim, the fact is, time is moving forward and eventually the summer vegetable gardening season will come to a close. That does not mean though that your gardening is over for the year. The use of a cold frame will still yield plenty of crops such as lettuce, spinach, kale, beets and chard well after Jack Frost nips at your nose.

Now is the perfect time to start planning that fall garden. Your mind is already on gardening with all of those tomatoes and cucumbers you are growing (or trying to grow), so get that pencil and paper out and start charting your course for the extended cooler weather season.

What I like to do is list the items that I am going to focus in on for the fall. Normally my inventory includes those items I mentioned previously plus a few more. I change it up from year to year just as I would for my spring/summer garden.

A lot of your leafy vegetables are excellent choices for the cooler months. I even read in an issue of Mother Earth News Magazine how a light touch of frost on your kale will enhance its flavor. I have not tried that myself, but if you do, or have, please let me know how it turned out for you.

A couple of good choices for quick growth include radish and turnips. They mature quickly and have great flavors. Keep an eye on some of those veggies you were meaning to start for the fall as we are at that point in time where you better get them started because they will need time to grow. Examples include rutabaga and spaghetti squash. If you use cold frames, the temperature won’t be as big an issue as sunlight will be, so get them started right away.

If you are like me, chances are you will be using the same garden areas in the fall that you used in the summer. The soil is going to be depleted with many nutrients, which does not necessarily mean you won’t be able to grow anything, it just means the growth could be stunted or the flavors of what you are growing won’t be as ideal.

After you remove your summer plants and before you plant your fall harvest, enrich your soil with the nutrients it needs. If you keep a compost pile, that would be perfect. Take your compost and mix it in. Don’t be afraid to add in some blood meal, fish emulsion or seasoned manure for your nitrogen, bonemeal for your phosphorous and seaweed, wood ash or green sand for your potassium. If you are going to add these items from store bought packages, be sure to pick items that contain other valuable nutrients as well, such as magnesium, calcium and so on.

But to reiterate, if you are keeping your own compost and better yet, vermicompost, then those items will give you just about everything your fall garden will need to thrive.

About the Author

Mike Podlesny is the author of Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the rest of us, the moderator for the largest vegetable gardening page on Facebook and creator of the monthly Seeds Club.

Watch the video below to learn more about Mike`s Seeds of the Month Club:

Compost Tea: The Natural Elixir of Gardening that Mother Nature has Perfected

One of the best natural solutions to make your plants healthier is through the use of compos tea. Compost tea is the process by which you use compost to brew a liquid solution that you will then “feed” to your plants. Compost tea can be applied to vegetables, trees, bushes, flowers, or in short anything that you grow that you want to get healthier.

The first step is to get compost. You can buy compost from a local nursery or garden center but the better option is to make your own. You make compost from organic material. In other words grass, leaves twigs, and food waste to name a few.

You then take the compost and mix it with water. After about an hour of soaking you can use the compost enriched water on your plants and you will get excellent benefits, but if you really want to get the most out of your compost tea, you have to brew it.

To brew compost tea you simply add an air pump to pump in fresh oxygen into the water as well as one to two ounces of molasses. What you are doing is creating an environment where bacteria that live in the compost will thrive.

After brewing for a couple of days separate the compost from the liquid with a strainer such as cheese cloth or an old screen and you are all. Put the liquid in a watering can or sprayer and let your plants have it. It is the most natural type of fertilizer you can ever apply to your plants that no chemical can reproduce.

Compost tea introduces healthy minerals and nutrients into the soil as well as “good” bacteria that work hard in the underlying ecosystem to create an environment for the roots of your plants to thrive.

Compost tea has also shown to prevent many diseases found in plants due to the microbial population found in compost tea.

You should apply compost tea first thing in the morning and if you are putting it directly into the soil it is ok to apply during rainy conditions, however if you are applying it directly to leaves then you should wait for a dryer day.

Studies have shown it is best to use your compost tea within 4 to 6 hours after you brew it. Remember you have living organisms in that tea and having it sit around too long can kill them and render your tea useless. Besides you have been waiting 2 days to use it while it’s been brewing.

As you can see compost tea has many benefits. Whether you are an avid vegetable, flower or shrub gardener, or are new to gardening altogether, then you should get to know how to brew compost tea, and start applying it to your gardens immediately.

About the Author

Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. It is a practical easy to follow book that teaches gardeners everything from composting techniques, aeration and frost conditions, to choosing the right tools and picking the right seeds.