Obviously I'm very keen for you humans to get on with some early sowings, I dream of lettuce you know, pea shoots and carrot tops are pretty good too! It might still be cold but the sowing season is a hectic time for gardeners and finding space for pots and trays bursting with new but fragile life can be pretty tricky.
A cold frame is a fantastic idea. Use cold frames to overwinter plants, expand the growing season, plant seeds, and acclimatize plants and flowers. Cold frames present a practical stage post in between greenhouse (or sunny sills!) and variable outdoor temperatures. Cold frames provide tender plants, strikings and young plants with shelter from the weather, particularly strong gusts, heavy rain and light frosts. Freezing conditions particularly can blight and damage plant tissues, a coldframe or cloche is really critical serving as buffer that modulates the air temperature inside the frame. So long as it is well-built, effectively located and well-regulated, the coldframe will increase your growing season by a matter of months each side.
Unheated cold frames are perfect for numerous uses all through the year - propagating any cuttings you've striked at almost any point in time, hardening off young plants sown in the green house before they can be planted outdoors in the very early summer months and delivering winter shelter to plants like penstemons together with other half-hardy flowers. You are able to furnish your plants with the correct conditions to survive dormancy, the plants will be ready to continue growing come spring.
In addition, just simply growing seeds in the cold frame boasts some merits - sometimes allowing your plants and flowers almost a month's extra growing time over straight-forward sowing into the ground. Or use them to heat up the garden soil and shelter young seedlings in advance of direct sowings into the earth. A portable cold frame provides the chance to get herbs, salads and vegetables started 2-3 weeks ahead of time, and it helps prevent the transplanting shock that a lot of plants experience because they will be better acclimatized to outdoor conditions from the outset.
Then there will be plenty of time for other gardening jobs, like getting that hedge in order, perhaps you could make use of a Long Reach Petrol Hedge Trimmer - OUCH! Just don't decapitate any snails sleeping in the hedge please!
Then there will be plenty of time for other gardening jobs, like getting that hedge in order, perhaps you could make use of a Long Reach Petrol Hedge Trimmer - OUCH! Just don't decapitate any snails sleeping in the hedge please!
Now just one word of advice, you might want to check your frames occasionally for unwelcome visitors! Us gastropods can think of no where better to hang out than a nice moist cold frame full of lettuce seedlings. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
