Building a cold-frame to extend the seasons

So, normally for my neck of the woods, gardening starts just after the first weekend in May.  There is sometimes the odd frost after that, but only rarely.    Garden centers around here call the May 24 weekend the best planting weekend but really, that only leaves 4 months of growing season till fall equinox.

Ok, but of course I want more, so I start my seeds indoors and beg my husbands indulgence for why the flats are taking over the kitchen and every spot in front of a window except on top of the server (somewhere has to be off limits I suppose).

But there are better ways to go about this, like, say a greenhouse, or it's smaller more cash friendly cousin, a cold frame .  I have been planning to have one for years but this spring I had all the things in hand to make one to fit my 5'x5' raised beds.

First I would like to give a big thank you to my mom and dad for renovating their second bathroom and not giving me a hard time about storing the old shower doors for a few years for me.  Next I would like to thank my old squashed shed for giving up some of it's timber and side pannels to help make a frame for my cold frame and lastly to my local TSC for having all the hardware I needed to make the above parts able to be dismantled in the summer.

Now some plants are just not going to hack the cold weather no matter how much protection  I give them, and light levels are going to be lower in the shoulder seasons so I should stick with perrenial or leaf crops to make the most of what little light there is.   

Some however were built to withstand the cold and erratic weather on either side of summer.  Plants like Swiss chard and broccoli which were alive and kicking last January are tops on my list along with peas onions and spinach are all on my list of things that are extra hardy.

 Due to this not being a fully pre-planned adventure I have some garlic planted in the center of but on the up side I had chard from last year ready to go in the corners of the bed.  It was rainbow chard but the white seems to be the hardiest of all the colours and is the only type that survived into February.

Late February I put all the parts together and covered it all over with the shed siding. Lined the inside back and side walls with the foil backed building insulation to bounce the light around inside of the box.  Then waited for the soil to warm up.  It didn't take long, on one sunny day I temped the soil surface at 35' C .   Next I added a trough of water near the back to add some thermal mass and to help level out the temperature swings from day to night and then finally seeded in some greens,  mixed greens and lettuce and beets and carrots all went into their allotted square feet with one empty row for tender seedlings to live in.

From then on all I've had to remember to do is to ventilate the box by lifting the glass a bit on warm days and to water regularly.  

I've thinned the seedlings down t their proper spacing and go figure, for the first time in a month we will have a few days with temps below 0'C.   Which means the seedlings had to go into the plastic mini green house and all the tender plants scampered back into the house.  The bay trees and the lemon will just have to tough it out for a few days. It's been a very strange "spring" but I can't remotely complain. Warm sunny days and way above average temperatures can't last forever, so I guess I'll just roll with it.