Cold frame

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A self-made cold frame
Cold frame in LH Bailey : Manual of Gardening , 1910

With cold frame to describe a flat, over-covered glass culture area, mostly for cultivations of seedlings is used. It is no higher than 1 m on its highest side and inclined to one side. So that this area can be worked on or ventilated, the individual cold frame windows (up to approx. 1.6 × 1.0 m) framed from wood or metal must be raised, tilted or completely removed. Like greenhouses , cold frames increase the time the plants have to grow.

In the literature, a distinction is made between warm and cold cold frames. In a warm cold frame (also hotbed) by is microbiological degradation processes (see FIG. Biomeiler ) in an inserted under the cultivation area manure pack (preferably in a "hot" current horse manure) generates heat and heated so the bottom. A cold cold frame, on the other hand, works without heating; only protection from the wind leads to a higher temperature than the surroundings. Such cold frames are often used to harden plants before planting them out.

Empty brick hotbeds in the nursery at Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire

Cold frames are in use in allotments and house gardens (some built using old windows), and kits are also traded. Occasionally, cold frames are provided with electrical heating devices.

Foil culture

The cold frame with its serious technical shortcomings and the low volume of air at which the temperature is difficult to regulate has been replaced, especially in nurseries, by foil tunnels of different sizes as an inexpensive alternative to the glass greenhouse. This type of cultivation of crops under plastic sheeting pursues - just like the cultivation in cold frames - the purpose of using the sheeting to achieve higher heat storage and thus higher yields.

See also

Web links

Commons : Cold Frame  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Böhmig: Advice for every garden day . Neumann Verlag, Leipzig 1983, p. 56 ff.
  2. Vegetable Production . In: German Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin (Hrsg.): Landwirtschaftliches Zentralblatt . tape 19 , issues 5-8. Akademie-Verlag, 1974, p. 1277 .