Few places in my yard give me more exciting movements per square foot of space than my cold frame. It is just a short distance from the house, near the kitchen, so I have to pass it every time I go to the barn to do chores.
This is fortunate, for a cold frame needs constant attention—raising sashes for ventilation when the sun gets too warm, frequent watering of flats in hot weather, and shading cuttings before they have struck root.
My cold frame was made several years ago when I had my first gardening fever. It has four sashes of the regulation size, 3′ by 6′ feet.
At the time of its construction, this was a relatively small area to grow everything I wanted. But, like other cold-frame gardeners, I soon learned what an immense—almost appalling—number of plants can be increased in such a space.
The sashes are perfect—heavy, weather-resistant wood with solid and overlapping panes of glass supported by metal rods. The frame, however, it is relatively poor, made from ordinary lumber, that bursts at the seams after four or five years of use.
In The Flat’s Shallow Soil
At first, all of the space in the cold frame was given over to flats, but after a time, I found that a good many things couldn’t be handled to advantage in the shallow soil of a flat.
Now the frame has been evenly divided, with the east half devoted to flats and the west half filled with about 8” inches of soil; it is easy to give each plant in this section the particular kind of soil it wants by adding a little sand, or wood’s earth, or peat. It can also be used to hold over large plants during the winter months.
In the flats, I grow many of the things for the vegetable garden and most of the general run of garden flowers.
Although I have almost unlimited resources in the way of soil on my farm—clean, sharp sand, sandy loam, clay, peat moss, acid, and neutral wood soil, and barnyard manure in all stages of decomposition, I still have not found an entirely satisfactory combination to use in the flats.
I want something that stays spongy so it will hold water. Instead, I get something that quickly dries into a light fluff or becomes as hard as a brick.
The trouble may be that any soil in a flat dries quickly in the summertime, and perhaps I have not watered the plants often enough.
In any case, this part of the frame furnishes an abundance of plants to be transplanted each spring into the vegetable and flower gardens.
Assortment Of Plants In Summer And Winter
In summer and winter, there is always an assortment of plants in the west half of the frame—the part filled with black soil.
Three years ago, the seed of various cotoneasters was planted here. It grew well, and when the plants were large enough, they were transplanted right back into the same part of the frame and grown on for another year before being set out in permanent locations in the yard. That worked very well.
The plants made much faster growth this way than if they had been grown in the vegetable garden, as the glass sashes added more than a month to the season of change.
At about the same time, I dug up some small, sulky bushes of the beautyberry (Callicarpa Americana), which had been growing very slowly in the yard, and, each year, were struck down by frost just as they had started to mature their berries.
Of course, these bushes had to be cut down severely to fit into the frame, but the following year, they bloomed and ripened their berries even on this stunted growth. This was merely an experiment, and it proved that our season was too short for this plant.
Next spring, the beautyberries will probably be dug up and thrown away. After all, a cold frame is no place for good-sized bushes.
A year or two ago last fall, I got a large packet of mixed lily seeds and planted it in a neat row in the frame.
There was no trouble with those who came up the following spring and were transplanted to other quarters. But lily seed does not sprout evenly.
Row Of Lilies Everywhere
When I put in some other plants where the row of lilies had been, the ungerminated seed was distributed throughout the frame, and now lilies are appearing everywhere.
Of all those I have tried, my favorite is the coral lily, which is also easiest to grow and comes most quickly into bloom.
A perennial that makes a mat of handsome, ferny foliage rises a stem with as many as a dozen large, rosy-purple flowers. To judge by the few times it is mentioned, the plant is not popular but desirable in foliage and bloom. In addition, it sets an abundance of seeds.
I planted some in the frame, where it grew readily. The plants take some time to get to blooming size, but the wait is worthwhile, for they are long-lived perennials.
Weeds In The Frame
Two weeds, on which I constantly wage war, get into my frame yearly. One is the so-called garden huckleberry.
Nightshade and the other is the wild blackberry. Both were brought into the frame with soil, the former from the garden, the latter with wood soil.
Growing Rare Gentians And Primulas
There was a time when I fell into the delusion that I could grow some of the rarer gentians and primulas from seed. So I went to great pains to make the right soil mixture, even baking it in an oven to sterilize it.
The seed was planted in pans, and I watched eagerly for the first sign of green. It appeared, and I gave those seedlings better care than one had ever given any before. They waxed husky and flourished.
But then, the true leaves began to appear. And there was something disturbingly familiar about them that did not suggest rare gentians and primulas.
Sure enough, they were wild blackberries. I may not be able to grow primulas and gentians, but I am a world-heater in raising will blackberries!
44659 by Walter J. Muilenburg