Building Cold Frame Plastic Sheeting

This video walks you through how to turn a raised garden bed into a hoop house cold frame.

Building cold frame plastic sheeting.

You must add a vent to help the plants breathe when under the plastic hoop house sheeting. You can even stretch polyethylene plastic sheeting across a wooden frame and use that. Made of plywood and poly sheeting its sloped shape allows for rain drainage while keeping the plants within warm in the cooler months of the year. I m building a cold frame this weekend and was going to use 6 mil plastic sheeting.

If you are building your frame on solid ground consider adding feet about 1 or 2 inches high to keep it off the ground. I ve seen a bunch of posts that mention getting this thickness at home depot in clear. It doesn t just have to be used as for replacement glazing either why not build your own bespoke cold frame and specify the exact size of polycarbonate you. Often people make them from used objects like old windows bricks and wooden planks but you can also buy them from a gardening or hardware store.

Why should i use polycarbonate to replace the glass panels in my cold frame. Everything else about this build is simple easy to use and may even be less expensive than some other cold frame options mentioned here. Wrap the lid frame with a single layer of 6 mil poly plastic sheeting. The raised cold frame.

See the next page for a tip involving rigid foam insulation material start with a piece of poly sheeting about 4 1 2 feet wide by about 10 feet long. A cold frame is a glassed in or clear plastic sheeting covered warm space for raising seedlings. Our polycarbonate is 200 x stronger than glass and half its weight making it a superb easy to use choice to replace broken or existing cold frame glass panels. You can even construct a simple bottomless wooden box and set it in the garden or atop other good soil in a sunny location.

I looked for this tonight and although it says clear it s not clear like glass or plexiglass is clear. The designs and ideas for building cold frames that you can find online are endless. Generally a cold frame is one or two foot tall with a diagonal at the front for easy access to capture more sunlight and to allow water run off. This particular cold frame is not elaborate but it works quite well.

Is this the right stuff. You can use corrugated fiberglass. You can also use plexiglass lexan lucite or another window strength plastic. It won t look as natural as some of the wooden frames discussed above and the plastic covers won t last as long as the recycled windows but it will get the job done.

Watch our video below for step by step building instructions. Cold frames can be bought or constructed from timber and plastic but concrete blocks or bricks can also be used. Diy cold frame from ppg pond plant girl this is a plan for a very simple 5 x 5 cold frame that will cost less than 30.