Breathing Again?

The Morning After a Freeze

I left the last blog entry at a cliffhanger, and if you've been  waiting with bated breath all this time, I do apologize. You can let that air out of your lungs slowly now. There is a triumphant ending to the story: here's the cold frame the morning after that first frosty night, and all is very much alive and well. Inside the frame next morning, the temperature was about 60 degrees, with outside temps at 40.
   
     The weather has been more spring-like in the week since I first moved the plants out to the frame overnight. Daytimes have been cool but pleasant at around 60-65 degrees, and nighttime lows have often been around freezing, with frost on the grass in the morning. I open up the frame at around 7am, removing the concrete blanket insulator and checking interior temps, which have maintained at an even 60 degrees, with a reassuring rush of warm, humid air very like greenhouse conditions as I crack open the light. The pile of grass in the center of the frame kept cooking for only about 4 days after I first filled it. That was enough time for the remainder of the yard to need mowing, and the Patient Spouse brought three more bags of clippings to replace what was cooked (which I added to the hay bales to even up and fill in gaps). As a result, the cold frame has had a successful week-plus run as a hotbed.The only damage I've seen thus far could actually have been caused by too much heat: browned seed leaves on zinnias and cosmos in select areas of the frame, more directly over the clippings pit than towards the cooler perimeter. It is possible to overheat plants, especially when they are very small and fragile, with so little root area and resilience.
    Last weekend, both of us needed a break after a tiring work week, and went off to the Pioneer Valley for the day. It was cool and cloudy when we left, and I spent a carefree morning at my favorite two nurseries, Hadley Garden Center and Andrew's Greenhouse. By noon, the sky had cleared and we were looking forward to a hike in new territory. It was getting warm enough in the car to open the windows. In fact, it was getting quite, quite warm. I mentioned that, at the next stop, I should make sure the two dahlia tubers I had just bought weren't lying in the sunshine with the potted plants I purchased, as they could really cook to death inside their clear plastic bags.
    Uh oh! As could all the tiny seedlings in my hot frame back home, an hour's drive away, with grass cooking underneath and sun now shining down through the unvented light. To his everlasting credit, it was my dear partner who suggested we should go right home, immediately, and skip the long-anticipated hike, though it was supposed to be his reward for a morning of being dragged through nurseries and hearing me chatter on about scented geraniums and The Bold-Leafed Coleus.

     The temperature in the frame, after we had broken land-speed records in our traverse back over the Berkshire Plateau, was a tolerable 75 degrees. Both the seedlings and I were lucky. I have actually roasted plants to death this way. Going from seed to transplant is a dicey and inexact business. In its own way, the "birthing season" for farmers of plants is as fraught as that for farmers of livestock.
Bloom Where You are planted!