Weighty Matters

I calculated the weight the cold frame would have been subjected to.

Given that the weight of water in pounds per square inch is 0.036127, here is what the water on the ribs might have been:.

Depth   Weight outer ribs   Weight center ribs
1 inch                     23.41               46.82
1.5 inch                 35.12               70.23
2 inch                     46.82               93.64

I cut out some snow and found that, after some melt, there was about an inch of water that would have accumulated on the top of the cold frame. No wonder it collapsed.

Cold Frame Post Mortem

A photo is worth a thousand words, but still needs to be interpreted with words to make sense. I took a closer look at the nature of the catastrophic collapse of the cold frame. There were some variations, but there was a general pattern. All center ribs broke at a place between 6 and 12 inches up from where they attached to the raised bed.

There were also several ribs that were snapped at their base where they were attached to the raised bed.

A key to the sequence of events that probably happened lies in the evidence provided by the end ribs. These did not snap completely, but bent and developed stress fractures. On both sides where this evidence appeared, there were splits at the 6 inch to 12 inch area above the raised bed timbers. This is more visible in the segment on the right but still occurred in the segment on the left.

Finally, it is worthy of note that on just one of the middle ribs was there evidence of breakage near the top of the rib.


So, what probably happened is this: The snow and ice accumulated on the top of the cold frame. Unlike rain that runs off, a bond was formed that kept the snow and ice in place. The snow and ice gradually caused the ribs to flex downward. Being only 5 mm in width and designed to be easy to bend, to a point this flexibility is desirable. However, when the weight of the snow and ice accumulated sufficient weight, probably in near the middle (lengthwise), the ribs started to snap, which probably cascaded throughout the structure relatively quickly. The points with the greatest stress was near the 45 degree points of the arc at that point in time.

My next step is to consider re-engineering changes that will allow future frames to either deal with snow and ice better or to allow them to hold more weight.

Salvaged Carrots

Kathy needed some fresh carrots for a carrot cake recipe. She wanted fresh, not frozen. I had planted seeds at the end of the summer planting window in one of the beds covered by the cold frames that collapsed under snow yesterday. So, I had James help me take the cover off. We picked all the carrots that were to be found. Carrots may survive the winter, but my experience last year was not promising. Better take them out when you have the opportunity.


The harvest wasn't as large as at the end of the summer, but there were two advantages. The carrots I planted around Memorial Day took extensive care. I had to water them daily in the summer. Watering is not an unpleasant task, but it required diligence. On the other hand, the carrots planted around Labor Day were pretty much ignored by me. I let nature take its course with them. I think they actually grew pretty well when covered with the cold frame that seemed to help regulate water under the tent.

The second advantage, a small one, is that when I harvest in the winter, I can go a little slower on the processing side of things. I cut the tops off the carrots and, because we had an open house for James and Angie to get ready for, just set them in the garage, where it is like a refrigerator.

The one thing I should have probably done better that would have resulted in a slightly larger harvest would have been at planting. I was hurried and didn't bother to make sure the seeds were properly covered. I had covered them with some potting mix out of a bag instead of properly getting seeds at the correct depth and covering them with soil. I probably cut my production 50% or more.

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.

16F

A temperature of 16F will evidently kill broccoli even if it is covered by a cold frame. That was what I experienced this week. I went out to pick some broccoli for dinner and found a horrible smell coming from under the cold frame. The spinach and lettuce still seem to be doing fine.

The lesson to be learned here is to plant broccoli and cauliflower earlier so I can harvest earlier.

I have thought about figuring out how to install a small heater with a fan in the cold frame that I could kick on when the temperature falls too low. I may continue to think about this. If I were better at electronics, I would design one that had a built in temperature sensor to auto-start it when under-the-frame temperatures dipped below a certain level. It might be worth thinking about or even searching for should someone have already thought of it. Then, instead of paying $3 a head for broccoli at the store, I could pay $10 a head as a prize for growing it myself. I obviously have to think about this.

December Veggies

After several nights with temperatures in the low 20s I was curious about how veggies in the cold frames have been doing. (last night, it got down to 20F.) Yesterday I uncovered one of the frames and picked some spinach. Spinach will usually survive these temperatures but lettuce won't. However, the lettuce looked just fine. (And the spinach, sauteed in olive oil with a little soy sauce and ginger, tasted pretty good.) It has also been pretty windy the past week. The bungee cords held everything down very well.

Last night Kathy cooked some carrots that had been harvested and stored in the refrigerator. They had started to deteriorate. I had presumed that, since we buy carrots that are stored in the refrigerated section of the grocery that they would do fine there. When I examined the rest, they looked like they were on the verge of some kind of transformation. So, last night I took out what remained in the refrigerator, peeled off the skin, parboiled them, and repackaged them with the FoodSaver for freezing. They mostly seemed good, but next time I should remember to just freeze them from the start.

Pantry

Yesterday was a cold and dreary Saturday. Cold rainy days are not conducive to working in the yard, no matter how diligent. Last night we hoped for snow, but when it finally got cold enough (the low last night was 21F), it quit raining.

Kathy is visiting her parents in California, which, oddly enough, gave me license to tackle the pantry. I don't know what other people's pantries are like. They aren't usually featured on home tours, unless they have been emptied of everything that functionally makes them a pantry. Ours was expanded when we redid our kitchen. We added about a foot to the port side, the benefit being that we also added a wall full of shelves that increased our storage capacity by about 40%.

The problem we have had has been moths. This has been a somewhat enduring problem, almost since the day we moved in. It seems that, no matter what we do, we eventually see the little creatures flitting around in the room. I have refused to fumigate. Mostly, we try to catch and kill. The biology/ecology has to be pretty easy to understand. Moths are attracted to food and spawn. So, there must be food that they can get to. We have taken to storing opened cereals -- both the contents of boxes as well as rolled oats -- in gallon sized containers with tight lids. We have tried to put as many other things in containers as well. But, there are things that are hard to store that way -- chips, saltine crackers, and cookies, for instance.

One of the big culprits this time was a sealed container of split peas and other beans. It was so loaded with vermin that I opened it outside before I put it into the compost pile. Sort of hate to see things like that go, but when they are bad, they are bad and there is no use trying to save them. What is telling is that the inside of the container was loaded with moths, many of which had already died. So, basically, the container worked, but in the wrong direction. Somehow moths had infested the contents when it was opened and then were trapped inside. It suggests we need to figure out how to be more efficient at keeping things free when we are storing things the first time.

My strategy was to pull out everything that was on a shelf and sort through it, cleaning up as I went. That meant that the kitchen became a temporary pantry. But it allowed me to sort things and get rid of things that no longer needed to be kept. I was able to clean up and organize the spice racks and put things back in a more organized way. There are lots of some things -- cereals, mixes, soups, canned and bottled fruits, cookbooks, pasta, oils, sweeteners, and, in our case, chocolate -- that can all be grouped. But then there are odd things like seaweed for sushi and samples of jams that we have just a little of.



No pantry that we have managed has ever been totally organized. I don't think it is possible. The second law of thermodynamics applies. All systems tend to entropy and disorganization over time. The other truth is that, when you clean up one mess, you almost always make another. The pantry is clean but the kitchen has suffered some and still needs some further cleaning, which will create a mess some where else, ad nauseam.