That's cool, but wow, you don't have single weed growing in your garden. Not one. Wow! Your soil is so rich and dark looking. Man that's beautiful stuff.

Thanks seamommy for noticing. What you see is 3 years of adding a yard of thoroughbred horse compost to my topsoil-less yard (seriously every bit of lush cow pasture topsoil that once sat in my neighborhood was scooped up and sold by the developers that created the community for our houses to be built on). As a consequence the native clay and limestone rocks are difficult to grow anything in and amending the soil is a requirement. Lucky for me I found a cheap, plentiful source of the compost. It's wonderful!

Here's a view of a quarter of the rocks (in some cases boulders) excavated from digging in JUST the back yard:
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I get more weeds growing in the grass than the garden. For some reason I just don't get many weeds in the garden (mostly dandelions). The few that grow are easily pulled out. The same horses that win Kentucky Derbies also make great soil amendments I guess. :)

You could use those rocks to make a microclimate in a greenhouse. Maybe make a wall that faces south.

My house has a dark red-brown brick on its front and it faces south. Plants that are planted in front of that wall grow like crazy, partly because of the heat from that brick wall. I had a volunteer oak tree grow 8 feet tall in three years in front of that brick wall, while some other volunteers in the yard are 6 years old and 5 feet tall.

My house has a dark red-brown brick on its front and it faces south. Plants that are planted in front of that wall grow like crazy,

Yup, me too, two story house that blocks winter north winds and heats up nicely. The soil in the raised bed next to the house does not freeze adjacent to the house.

To the OP, I like the stackable boxes and the clever repurposing - how do you keep from overheating the boxes, or are you out there daily moving them?

Dan

The rock wall is a great idea! I hadn't thought of that! The plastic doesn't completely touch the ground on the back side and a rock wall (if I can fit it in there without crushing the asparagus on that side) would close the gap and be a neat way of helping store heat under the hoop cover. Thanks!

To keep the temperature of the cold frames (AKA sun boxes) where I want it, I merely slide the glass on top like opening a window a crack or make it a wide opening. This allows the heat to escape. I don't have much going on in them yet. I did plant carrot, radish and spinach seeds this weekend in the shallow ones as an experiment. It is supposed to warm up into the high 60s\70s at the tail end of this week, so it will be interesting if I get some germination with that.

I collected more pieces from that old trampoline. The curved portions that make up the giant ring.. as it turns out can also fit together into a U-shape also (albeit curvy), but they are taller, so with more plastic I think I could get away with another hoop house a little taller on the other side. Maybe the big Swiss Chard and garlic chives would like that?

Nice job of salvaging materials.

I think I'll take a cue from you and finally install a cold frame on one of my beds. I would enjoy the fresh lettuce and spinach.

The SFG 'sun box' is very easy to construct and since it sections in manageable pieces, I can grow the height of the enclosure by adding new sections.

The wood & nails are Freecycle wood salvaged from an old church staircase and the foam padding stapled to the inner and outer sides (some rotted off) is packing from inside Dell server shipping boxes I snatched from work a couple years ago. The windows were also Freecycled material. Total cost of construction = a couple gallons of gas to pick up the materials and time (not much).

I'm amazed that lettuce isn't bitter yet. Fall really is a good time to garden. I just wish it were longer. :)

I store heat using old milk jugs and the 2.5 gal water containers from the grocery store, fill with water and color that water as dark as I can get it. Much more efficient than stone/brick/concrete/etc. I'm also working on a solar soil heater for the coldframe using the same principle. Dark rocks help keep the soil a bit warmer, however, but they don't heat air as well nor for as long as water. I use an automatic opener in the coldframe, as I can't go out to the garden and move the tops to vent heat - forget once and that's it (esp. in Colo.).

Dumpster diving around new subdivision construction has yielded most of my building material as well. Very productive exercise and its amazing how much waste there is in McSuburb house construction.

Keep up the good work, bencjedi.

Dan

Wow! I'm impressed! I was thinking of constructing some sort of greenhouse/cold frame makeshift structure and was just looking for ideas. Now i can't wait to start building and growing!!!! thanks for the inspiration!!!