Cold frame

With cold frame or hotbed to describe a flat, covered with glass culture surface, which is usually used for cultivations of young plants. It is at its highest side is not higher than 1 m and tilted to one side. Thus, this area can be edited or ventilated, each framed in wood or metal Greenhouse arcs (up to about 1.6 x 1.0 m) have raised, to be tilted or removed completely. As greenhouses Cold frames extend the time available to the plants for growth.

In the literature a distinction is made between hot and cold cold frame. In a warm cold frame (or hotbed ), heat is generated by microbial degradation processes (see Biomeiler ) in an introduced under the acreage manure pack (preferably from the force as a " hot " horse manure ) and then heated the floor.

Cold frames are ( partly built using old windows ) in small and home gardens still in use, and also kits are traded. Occasionally, cold frames are provided with electric heaters.

Film culture

The cold frame with his serious work- related faults and the low volume of air in which the temperature is difficult to control, is superseded especially in nurseries by differently sized polytunnel as a cheaper alternative to glass greenhouse. Pursuing this type of cultivation of crops under plastic films - as well as the cultivation in the cold frame - the purpose of the film has a higher heat storage and thus to achieve higher yields.