Photo: Grøn Kommunikation

 

If you have filled your greenhouse with cucumbers and tomatoes, and there is no room for the early salad, cauliflower, carrots and other goodies, then you should consider a garden frame for your greenhouse. If you use all of your money on summer flowers, then instead you should grow your own in a garden frame and to a fraction of what you otherwise should pay.

A garden frame is used to pre-cultivate salad, cabbage, carrots and flowers if you want to transplant them later. Generally, it is an advantage to sow in pots and then transplant in the garden. Then the soil and roots will get more compact. 

The advantage of a garden frame is that the temperature is higher than outside, just like in the greenhouse. Also, the plants are in lee from wind and rain.

During spring the garden frame is a good place to acclimatise the plants that were sprouting inside. You can put your pots of small plants in the garden frame, so they can slowly adapt to the harsh life outside.

Be careful. Put the plants out for a couple of hours during the first days and then later let them stay in the garden frame. When the plants are in the garden frame you can open the window more and more to let them adapt. Then they will soon be ready for the outside life.

Continue in late summer

When the soil in the garden is ready to receive the early crops, then you can put plants that need more heat in the garden frame. Plants like beans, sweet corn, melon and squash, or perennials and cuttings. In this way, you prolong the season and keep growing all the way into fall and early winter.