| Insulated Cold Frame is Solution to Many Limitations - High Altitude
Researched and written by Jim Thomas
(Summer 1996)... Gardening in Flagstaff, Arizona, is a challenge, to say the least. It seems like it is either too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet or too windy for an outside garden to thrive, even for a short time. We live in a climate where seven months of the year we can expect it to freeze at night, and it often does, as well, in the remaining five months which constitute our so-called growing season.
The obvious solution to all of this is a greenhouse- a microclimate wherein you can override most of these problems.
I decided to have one. I decided this several years ago. With this desire came the realization that I needed to learn some new technologies and I needed to face several decisions, the least of which was whether or not to build my own or to buy a kit or to hire a contractor to build one. A little research revealed some immediate facts of life.
First, the cost of buying or building a custom unit was a bit beyond my immediate abilities. I became aware that this single item, the expense of having a professional unit, is a stumbling block for most of us. Most of us who want to garden year around do not have a greenhouse yet because of this single issue. This gave me a second challenge. Since I'd like to see many more people having and using a greenhouse, I wondered if I could find less expensive solutions that would also be solutions for others. Being an "environmentalist," I also had an interest in seeing what is possible using recycled materials as much as possible.
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Early in my research, I found that some local fencing companies will either discard, or sell cheaply, pieces of cedar lumber, fence pickets. This gave me a source of building material that is recommended as a building material around gardening. And it is an item slated for the dump or the wood stove as waste, which seems a mistake for such valuable material. I began to acquire this as available and I organized stacks of it in my yard, based on the quality per piece. There was very little waste from my uses.
For two years I sought out sources for discarded glass that I could recycle into a greenhouse. The problem is that you need a lot of glass panels that are the same size and finding old windows in enough quantity that are all the same size is impossible. Then I discovered that a local "used materials" store (ERIC Building Supply) sells used home shower doors for eight dollars a piece. And they have lots of them. As a bonus I discovered that these old doors are made of safety glass and the light is diffused when it passes through it. In all of my research I discovered that glazing was the major expense. Now I had more than enough panels for less than one hundred dollars. Not only was I solving the budget barrier but I was contributing to my philosophy of using as many recycled materials as I could. I was on my way with these two discoveries and I became busy making drawings and plans.
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