Spring in coming in TX and we decided to get an early start on seeding this year. To avoid a late frost from killing our seedings I decided to make a few cold-frames.
Of course one could simply nail together a few boards…, no, that would be too easy. No frames without hand-cut dovetails in my garden.
As is the course of nature though the sun does not really care much about my hand-cut dovetailed coldframes: In winter straight sided boxes cast shadows on the tender vegetables do not get an optimal exposure to the sun.
The first attempt was less then stellar:
and sure enough, I did not understand one of the steps they outline in the instructions.
I guess I can declare the second attempt a success, although, there’s still a long way to go before this will be fine furniture grade joinery.
BTW, if you take a close look at the “dovetail formula” you’ll notice that this formula is only valid for board that are much thinner than they are wide, which I’d say is almost always a correct assumption.
Thanks for listening.
6 comments so far
MsDebbieP
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12193 posts in 1770 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 96 days ago
very impressive!!!
-- - Debbie, SW Ontario Canada (USDA Hardiness Zone: 5a) http://www.execulink.com/~yohan
Radicalfarmergal
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3436 posts in 1032 days
hardiness zone 5b
posted 96 days ago
I really like my cold frame and I think you will enjoy yours too. What are you planning to start in it this spring? I am thinking that in your climate, you will be able to grow cold-hardy vegetables like spinach straight through the winter. Nice work on the joinery.
-- "To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." M. Gandhi
jroot
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4537 posts in 1400 days
hardiness zone 5a
posted 96 days ago
Looks very impressive. I like the angles you’ve put in. Your logic makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing.
-- jroot ....... Southern Ontario .......... grow zone 5A
sharad
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1319 posts in 987 days
hardiness zone 11
posted 96 days ago
Well thought idea and very nicely executed.
Sharad
-- Bagwan-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein
justjoel
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664 posts in 1150 days
hardiness zone 7a
posted 96 days ago
While I’m not brave enough to attempt the dovetails, I do indeed like your angles, I’ll need to pay attention to that when (and if) I make mine – thank you for showing us that. I’m also impressed by your repurposing of various containers to start your seeds in!
-- There's a box?
chscholz
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105 posts in 653 days
hardiness zone 8
posted 91 days ago
Thanks for the kind words.
We are growing a bunch of “exotic” vegetables, meaning vegetables I have never heard of. What you are looking at is Chinese lettuce, there is this red vegetable that one of the few vegetables that does not go dormant during the TX summer, we have a variety of melons/pumpkins/bitter melons that’s been sprouting very well, I think this year we have honey melon (?) in the mix. They say you can’t transplant pumpkins/winter melons and such, it worked fine for us last year.
We actually did harvest vegetables throughout this winter, looks like we were lucky since this winter was very mild so far. The primary vegetable is hong cai tai (red rape stems/leaves/flowers), great tasting vegetable that I have not even seen in the local Asian stores. It might be local to Hunan province. Grows very well in our garden.
Yes, we re-purpose various boxes for planting. We do collect tofu boxes and put them on styrofoam plates that come with pre-packaged meat to keep out the cold. We’ve been experimenting with re-purposing egg crates, toilet paper roles and newspaper as opposed to commercial ready-made seed starting stuff. We will not win a beauty contest, and it will not help the economy either, but it all works very well and keeps stuff out of our landfills.