My Chicago Garden

I got the cold frame completed this weekend.  I had to buy about $50 more of material because of mistakes I made during construction. I wasn’t working from a plan so I knew I ran the risk of things not lining up just right.  I also added two handles on either end for easier lifting.

As you can see in the picture to the left that I kept the two tomato plants running across the ground. Under the straw is a patch of garlic I’m going to try and over-winter.

In the picture to the right you can see the self opening vent system that I heard about from Eric over at gardenfork.tv. I have another vent that I thought about installing in the other wall to create a cross-draw situation but I’m concerned about the heat loss in the winter so I’m leaving it out for now.  I also found out that the coldframe is too far from my wireless weather station base station so I can’t record temperature without a repeater. I went ahead and picked one up from Ambient Weather for $25.

The 7 day forecast is calling for 36F on friday night.  Looks like that will be our next opportunity for first frost of the season.

We also used the remaining apples from our U-Pick trip, from a few weekends ago, to make an apple pie and some apple ice cream. Yum!