Building

A cold frame can be made in almost any shape and size depending on where it's going. For ours, we made it a little smaller than the raised plant bed so it sits inside it for better stability.

In these photos, you can see parts of the process of building these cold frames. We learned to cut wood with a table saw, we learned how to screw together joints with an electric drill/screwdriver, and we also used levels and staple guns.

Materials

The sides are made out of pressurized wood which is durable and perfect for our cold frame needs. As said before, the clear top is made out of clear marine vinyl. This is flexible so that we're able to move it. It's basically like plastic but much more sturdy. The marine vinyl lets the sunlight shine through so that the plants are still getting the right amount of sunlight. And since our boxes are taller on one side and shorter on the other, it is able to be facing where the sun is most of the day. There are also hinges on the back for moving the top up and down, they have removable pins for easier storage too! At first, he had the cold frames as 3 ft (tall side) and 2 ft (short side), which was way to big. So then, we tried 2 ft and 1 ft and that was much more suitable for the garden.

On the left, we got to cutting and drilling wood together. Ryann's dad taught us how to use this electric saw.

Next, we actually started to assemble the frame, Brianna stands next to a finished base and is starting to make the second one.

Here we laid the vinyl under and then wrapped it around the edge of the frame. The side you see up is actually the inside, we did this so that no water is able to leak into it. You may be thinking, "but don't plants need water?". Yes, they do. But if it's raining heavily, we want to limit the amount of water coming in. The garden beds also have an irrigation system that has timed shifts.

We were lucky enough to have a friend who donated the marine vinyl to us! This helped so much because we used a lot of it and didn't need to spend money on it. We got to staple gun the vinyl onto the frames.

In the second photo we are cutting and stapling the vinyl onto the lid.

It can even grow Girl Scouts!

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