Tip of the month: March

Invest in a garden ‘Time-machine’

If I had to come up with a ‘wish’ list of gardening kit, then a coldframe would be up there with a stainless-steel spade and fork, Dutch hoe, Tina knife and Felco secateurs. It’s like your very own time machine; making cuttings root and seeds germinate more quickly, eking summer out a few weeks longer and turning late winter into spring. Once you’ve had a coldframe you will wonder how on earth you managed without it. Best of all, though, a coldframe opens up a range of exciting opportunities – allowing you to propagate more plants, grow a wider range of crops and protect cherished specimens, as well as increasing your gardening year, by extending the growing season.

Why have a coldframe?

• Rooting cuttings quickly
• Successful sowing
• Hardening-off young plants
• Growing tender crops
• Winter protection

What to look for

First and foremost, a coldframe must work. It must reliably create a stable, protected environment whatever the weather conditions outside. In the winter, it must be sufficiently frost-proof to protect its charges, while in the spring and autumn the ventilation system must be sufficiently subtle yet man-enough to allow effective temperature control. When buying a coldframe, it’s also worth bearing in mind how convenient it is to use, whether you can move it around the garden easily and how straightforward it is to put together in the first place. Durability is also an important, of course, but style and appearance is largely personal preference.

Making the most of your coldframe

With a coldframe, propagating your favourite plants is simplicity itself. During spring you can increase your stock of a wide range of perennials and by summer you can take cuttings from many different shrubs. Hardwood cuttings in the autumn will root more readily and over the winter a coldframe will increase your success rate with root cuttings. Autumn sowings of perennials will give you flowering specimens by the following year, while sweet peas, will produce stronger specimens when started in pots in a coldframe and be weeks ahead of spring-sown plants. You can get a head start with many vegetable crops in a coldframe, too. And you’ll get better results from sun-lovers, such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. By the autumn, a coldframe is an ideal safe-haven for expensive tender perennials, such as fuchsias, pelargoniums and penstemon. But have a piece of bubble polythene or old carpet handy to throw over the top and during really cold weather.

So, get time on your side this spring and invest in a coldframe.