Frosty Failure

It snowed and iced yesterday. When I had anticipated what effect it would have on the cold frames, I thought the snow would sort of slide off to the sides. I didn't anticipate what would actually happen. What really happened, of course, was that most of the interior ribs broke and the covers collapsed. A catastrophe in both the mathematical and horticultural sense.


My design of the cold frames was obviously a failure. Although, one of my favorite quotes is from Francis Bacon.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

It will be until the snow leaves that I will be able to do a complete post mortem. However, it appears without question that the biggest stress was on the center sections. While damaged, the end ribs didn't actually break.



On the other hand, the greenhouse stayed intact.



I had enough sense to put something up against the entrance to the beehive. In this case, I hadn't taken the top cover and inner cover in from the hive that had died from a moth invasion in, so I just laid them up against the front of the hive. Better than last year when the March storm blew snow and ice right inside the hive. I hope this helped.