Allotments 4 All

I have a friend who owns a double glazing company and in a conversation at the pub last night he offered me a load of glazed Sash Windows and glazed wooden doors that he was replacing at an old country house down the road. Can I make some classy cold frames with them?  Any building ideas or plans for the best position and shape? What would you recommend to grow in them over the winter period?? I don't eat a lot of salad so lettuces aren't an option. Otherwise it's down the tip with the lot....seems a shame and a waste of beautiful hardwood windows and doors.  Aparently double glazing firms break these things up regularly and dump them !!

Hi,  this is my coldframe.  Four window frames screwed together.  I do have a lid which is just another window but I put hinges on so I can attach it to the frame when winter comes.  I've just sown some cabbage "Hispi" and when I pot them on they'll be going in the frame for planting out in spring.  Winter lettuce could be put in the frame, and I've just put some lettuce seeds in boxes and they're in the frame now.  So fingers crossed.  I just look in the seed catalogues at what can be sown now.  Fothergills catalogue is quite good for that

The absolute best book on the subject I have read is

Eliot Coleman's 'Four Season Harvest' ISBN 189013227-6
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1890132276/qid=1129120527/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl/202-4305545-9390228


Written in Maine, based on French horticultural practice, and flexible enough to use here, makes me ashamed to have one sq ft of plot bare in the Winter! Well worth twelve squid on amazon and a good read in Winter too ;D

Here's mine: mostly pallets with makrolon lid

Took you at your word supersprout and placed an order for the book

MikeB

Hi..I'm new to this site and apologise if I hav'nt got the etiquette right :) Have you thought of making a greenhouse with the freebie panes? A friend of mine gave me some double-glazed units that he took out from someones house (to be replaced with new ones). I made a wooden frame, attached the windows to it and topped it off with a conservatory roof that my neighbour was going to dump! I suppose the whole thing cost about £100.....for the wood, screws etc., but will last for years to come....not a bad price for a 7' x 14' greenhouse.

Can he not put the original sash windows back in the house - breaks my heart to see them ripped out and replaced with plastic ones  :'(
(I know  - I don't have to pay their heating bills etc..... )

A mini greenhouse or cold frame ala jenny sound slike a great idea. Would be a real shame for the windows to goto waste.
My OH built our cold frame out of some strips of laminate floor we ripped out and we use an old aluminium double glazed window as a lid.

I got original sash windows.  Flipping freezing that's what they are  ;D  Had them restored, well some of them  :)

When we had our windows replaced we had them done properly (i.e. expensively) and had them done in as closer style as possible to the originals (we live in an Edwardian terrace).  Pity everybody else in the street didn't do the same.

Let me know how you get on with the book MikeB! I have become very ambitious and will just keep chucking stuff at the garden to see what grows during the cold months. I don't have a polytunnel, so will try cloches/cold frames instead. Only drawback? No cold frame ... yet! ;D