Home-made cloches & cold frames

[LittleShamrock]

OH made a cold-frame kinda thing last year, out of a large plank of scrap plywood, with the back panel twice the height of the front panel, so it's tall enough to keep chillis etc in for a while, and the sun gets in nicely. The cover is our old shed window, put on with a couple of hinges, and the box is painted glossy white inside (apparently that helps?) We looked at buying a one but nothing seemed right and they were so expensive It was even more satisfying then to have one made for free!

[cazp]

Hello. Well finally got round to completing the cloche frames so thought I would post a follow up to my last post on this thread.



The wood frame is braced in the corners with brackets from screwfix. The plastic water pipe "hoops" are housed in holes drilled in to the corners of the frame - max height from bed 1.10m. The cross pipes are made of straight electrical conduit pipe (we couldnt use the water pipe as it wanted to bend).

The covers are made of Harrod Horticultural Heavy Duty Ultra Fine Insect mesh which is fabulous - the mesh is really fine and seems very strong. As it is quite a stiff fabric it sits over the hoops nicely. It machine sewed very easily and with small stitches makes a very tight seam.

The cover has Screwfix "snap hooks" in each corner, and these clip on to Screwfix "Marine Eye Plates" screwed on to the raised beds. I am sure this arrangement is gale-proof.



The ultra fine insect mesh covers provide some frost protection - but when the frosts are really hard I figure I could float fleece over the top of seedlings and perhaps secure to the cross bars of the cloche, that way it should stay in place.

Another job done!