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| Photo Credit: John Buettner |
| Protect your plants with a simple straw bale cold frame. |
Many avid gardeners find themselves in a predicament when winter arrives – you have too many tender plants (that you’d rather not compost) and not enough storage space. Since most homes have a limited number of available windowsills and few homeowners have a greenhouse (or can afford to heat one), one solution is to build a cold frame for your plants using bales of straw.
Straw bales are cheap and easy to lift into place. (As an added bonus, you’ll have plenty of mulch come next spring!) The straw cold frame is best suited to shelter newly acquired plants and rooted cuttings that may not handle freezing weather. They can also be used to protect container plants or any tender growers you may have dug up and stuck in temporary pots for overwintering. Be warned, however: This structure won’t work for tropicals that can’t handle even a light frost. Making a straw bale cold frame is easy. Begin by scoping out the best location – preferably an open, level spot. It’s important that you place your straw bale frame carefully in the right location, because bales act like giant sponges – once they endure a rainy day or two, they’ll soak up enough water and become too heavy to lift or rearrange easily. Build a cold frame in a sunny location for leafy plants, and build one in a shady location for anything that goes dormant during winter. Arrange your straw bales in a rectangular shape no more than one-bale-wide to avoid cold pockets in the center of the structure. The length of the cold frame can be as long as necessary to accommodate your plants, so you can use as many bales as needed there. The long box shape creates a microclimate of warm air. If the rectangle is too wide, the pocket of warmth won’t extend all the way across the cold frame. If you need more space, just build more cold frames. Secure the straw bales by pounding small wooden or metal stakes through the bales and into the ground.
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