Buy a Garden Cold Frame Online

If you are wondering whether or not to buy a garden cold frame online, read on for some more information on their purpose and benefits.

A garden cold frame is essentially just a box with a sloping glass lid.

Traditionally, they were made of brick or wood with a hinged glass door on top which could be opened slightly to allow the outside air in on quiet days to allow the plants inside to slowly adjust to their new environment.

Plants are shocked when they are moved from warm, cosy environments like a greenhouse or even a warm windowsill inside the house, to outside.

Sometimes the shock can kill, and although many times the plants do survive, it is kinder to give them a half-way house to prepare them for their final growing area.

This is where a garden cold frame comes into its own.

No matter where you live in the world, outdoors throughout a 24 hour period there are considerable temperature variations as well as rainfall variations (gentle or very heavy), both of which is likely to shock any plant which up till then lived somewhere where neither the temperatures nor watering ever varied much.

On top of that, they have to learn to live with insects, birds and other little animals that may reside in your garden, mice, voles, cats etc.

Modern garden cold frames are normally made wholly from either plastic or glass and come in a ready to erect kit so that they can be up and working same day as delivery.

Cold frames are essential for any gardener. They protect young plants over winter; can be used to grow seedlings, but their most important job is to harden off greenhouse-grown plants ready for planting in the garden.

Even that newnursery plant you just bought will benefit from spending a week or two in a garden cold frame before being planted in its final position in the garden.

The inside of a cold frame acts like a microclimate that your plants will love.

In addition to the cold frames shown above, you may wish to consider accessories for them, like a garden cold frame cover, or an automatic arm opener for a window vent.

Everything you can think of that can make your garden frame better and easier to operate, can easily be bought online.

Cold frames have many uses in the garden as well as for hardening plants off.

• They can be used to propagate cuttings (clones) of many plants, as well as for seed raising earlier than if planted directly into the ground.
• They can be used as an extension to the greenhouse. Many plants prefer the cooler conditions of the cold frame, especially in the heat of the summer when greenhouses can be become uncomfortably hot for plants.

A garden cold frame is always best placed in a sunny, sheltered part of the garden, with the tapered roof pointing directly south.