Henny Penny Farmette

This year I planted a winter garden. I’m growing most of my vegetables in cold frames.

Snow peas seem to thrive with the protection of a cold frame

When the water outside is frozen and the grass and rooftops glisten with frost, it’s a thrill to see lush green vegetables growing under glass in my garden.

Bok choy growing in my cold frame

Vegetables like spinach, broccoli, French breakfast radishes, bok choy, and sugar snap peas are thriving where they’ve been planted in good soil under a cold frame.

Cold frames are easy to construct. Basically, they are transparent covers over a prepared bed of soil. Mine are made of old, salvaged windows that crank open and are mounted atop some of our four-by-six-foot raised beds. Cold frames protect against rain, wind, ice, and snow. The frames can even protect somewhat against infestation by common pests.

Lush, leafy tops of beets suggest the color of the root bulking out beneath the soil

It’s important to provide ventilation by opening the cold frame on warm days. Under glass, the heat intensifies and could burn your tender plants. When night-time temps plunge, keep the cold frame closed. You can pile further insulation against the frames using bales of straw or hay or bags of raked leaves.

Inside these protected glass spaces this time of year (in deep December), a variety of cool-season crops can be cultivated. Consider planting seedlings of green leafy plants like kale, mustard greens, cabbages, turnips, radishes, carrots, beets, lettuces, broccoli, and onions.

Plant red, yellow, or white onions in the fall for spring harvesting

Our farmette is located in Zone 15. We live in a sheltered valley inland from the San Francisco Bay and east of the Berkeley hills. We get really hot summers with temperatures that climb into triple digits. In winter, we get frost and freezes and more rarely a dusting of snow.

Long after other gardeners in our area have put away their trowels and shovels, I’m still at it. Gardening puts food on the table. When we are quarantining ourselves from others, we can focus on our passion for gardening and grow cool-season crops in late fall, early spring, and, yes, even in winter with the help of a cold frame or two.

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These ugly windows are dinosaurs from a previous century

We’ve been updating our windows on the farmette house. The work recently triggered a memory of an incident involving windows at the start of the remodeling of my San Jose home years ago.

Back then, even before the architect had begun the drawings, I informed him I wanted lots of windows and even noted placement, size, and shape. The poor  man hadn’t even drawn the walls yet! We had a good laugh over my exuberance.

Here on the farmette where I’m married to the architect, I recalled that memory while we were pulling out the single-paned windows and replacing them with more energy efficient, double-paned windows.

New windows can significantly transform the exterior appearance of the house as these as-yet-unframed ones demonstrate

The new windows will lower our energy bills and provide us with views of the world beyond the walls. From inside the house, I can look out and see my fairy garden (the Iceberg hybrid tea rose encircled in a mass planting of gray-green yarrow) and the blooms of purple and white irises in a circular planting around the almond tree. Once we’ve added trim and paint, the view outside in will be no less spectacular.

Framing the windows and applying a coat of primer to the walls begins the transformation