Cold Frame Saga
It’s a little bit sad. The old cold frame was the biggest hit on our Ampersand site tours, and we have dismantled it. It was amazing in many ways. It provided a great environment for growing greens in the winter, it had a ready made structure for throwing shade cloth over in the summer, and best of all was the Passive Solar Cold Frame Tender that opened the lid by itself, just with the pressure that was created by the light of sunrise. And it closed all by itself in the evening, all just with this contraption of bottles and tubes that we assembled. I wrote a blog post about it in 2014.
When I noticed recently that the main bottle for our passive solar cold frame tender busted from ultraviolet exposure, I was gifted a new bottle immediately. This was a clear message that the solar tender must be used somewhere else. And I’ve got some amazing and artistic plans for it. But you will have to wait for that.

Perhaps you have already seen the new cold frame that our interns made. Maybe you read my past blog post about our friend Clair Gardner’s Water Wise Planter that she has developed. We generally followed her instructions and made one of our own.
After the interns left the tending of our various garden beds was left to me, I knew it was finally time to discontinue use of the old cold frame. So I transplanted the kale and chard into the new cold frame.
I’m excited about this new year-round growing bed. Thanks to Clair and the interns for helping this happen!
Written by Amanda Bramble