Raised Bed With Cold Frame

Last year, I put my cold frame to use and ended up loving it. I also built a couple of temporary raised beds because a few of my vegetables weren't growing very well.

Wood raised garden bed

This spring, I was planning on building some additional cold frames and raised beds.

Rather than building these as separate pieces, I planned to incorporate a cold frame right into the raised bed by building a top for it.

I wanted something quick to assemble and easy to store.

Drill hole for wire frame

Now that I have the greenhouse, I don't need as many cold frames as I was originally planning.

But I still wanted to add a few cold frames inside the greenhouse.

This will give my warm weather vegetables an an extra layer of protection against the cold spring nights.

Completed wire for the cold frame arch

My husband built the boxes for me, and helped me come up with an idea for the cold frame tops.

We were going to try something with PVC piping, but it was too rigid to bend over the narrow box.

We had some heavy wire in the garage, so we decided to see if that would work.

Plastic over wire frame

We drilled holes in the top of each side of the wood frame to hold the wire in place.

Then we arched the wire over the box and put it into the holes.

Once the frame was done, I simply wrapped the wire arches in plastic.

I used small metal clamps to hold the plastic in place.

The metal pieces are easy to pop in and out of the frame whenever I need to.

Securing the plastic over the frame

These metal arches will double as row covers once the plastic comes off.

The best part is that the cold frame tops didn't cost me anything, I reused materials we already had.

It was nice that I didn't have to worry about building a sturdy top for these cold frames.

If  I was going to use them outside, I would have secured the plastic to the metal frame better.

I also would have weighed the plastic down around the bottom. For now, these work great for what I need.