Depending on where you live you might want to find ways to expand the growing season. In the higher elevations winter may come early and stay late. The freezing temperatures make obtaining a backyard at the ground early a futile attempt.
Growing Season Extension Techniques
There are a number of techniques you can use for more growing season. What I’m talking about is developing a micro climate for the plants, commonly referred to as a hot house or green house. However you do not need a massive expensive arrangement to sprout plants and give them a head start. Using cheap plastic sheeting and a few bets you can control the climate of a few little areas where your sprouting beds can be found.
Though it can be a small challenge but the pay off is a bigger more successful and productive garden. In early spring when the weather is starting to get nice but still less than optimal you can earn a cold frame. A cold frame is a box framework of a box with a lid, everywhere there would be a good surface that you put in 6 mil clear poly sheeting. When the sunlight hits the plastic the heat becomes trapped in the cold period creating a hot home environment where you are able to place potted plants.
Use a saucer from the kitchen and put a folded paper towel on it. Make it moist, open the fold and then pour into your seeds, radish, carrot, corn, whatever you need to grow could be flowers. Set the saucer on the window sill after pouring off the excess water. You’ll have to watch and make sure that the paper remains damp to close wetness and in a couple of days the seeds will germinate and begin to grow.
Plant your sprouts in used egg cartons, the old grey paper type, since they absorb moisture whereas the Styrofoam egg cartons won’t. Fill the egg carton with potting soil add some water and put in the cold period. You might have to transplant them into little two and three inch containers as they grow. By the time you can till the soil and plant you need to have a few 3 to 5 inch crops or bigger to go from the ground and you have pulled a fast one on mother nature.
Your cold framework / hot home could get hot enough you will need to put a shade over it at the hottest period of the day in order to not cook you plants or you can open the lid a crack to let hot air escape, you simply have to tend it, like anything else.
If you have already got some plants at the ground and you do not need them to freeze you can drive in a stake beside the plant and cut a large circle of plastic poke a little hole in the middle of the plastic and slip it on the rod then take the outer border and fasten it to the floor with a little dirt or some stones use a stapler to attach the top to the bet. It resembles a t-pee when your done and it will trap heat, moisture and sun inside where the plant is. Again watch it does not get overly hot.
With some creative use of plastic it is possible to make micro climates that help you get ahead start on the growing season. Hope you get a remarkable garden experience now.
