Cold Frames And Their Glazing
There are lots of cold frames available to choose from but one of the biggest factors to consider when making your choice is the glazing used.
When selecting your cold frame, you’ll find models glazed with glass, double skinned plastic, single sheet plastic or shaped polythene. All these types have their own benefits.
For heat retention, double-skinned plastic glazing will be better than glass – but glass will retain heat better than single sheet plastic glazing or polythene covers.
Price wise, glass cold frames will be the most expensive, followed by double skinned plastic, single sheet plastic and polythene.
For maximum safety choose a cold frame with a plastic or polythene cover – so if you’ve got children or pets these cold frames would be the better choice. However, apart from the traditional horticultural glass used to glazed cold frames, it is now possible to get toughened glass, which, although breakable is much tougher than standard glass and if broken it breaks ‘safely’ (similar to a car windscreen).
Cold frames can sometimes be moved around the garden to protect different plants at different times of year. If this is your plan, then consider that a glass glazed cold frame will be much heavier than one glazed with polythene or plastic. However, this extra weight can be good in terms of stability in exposed / windy areas – with the other types of cold frame you need to ensure that they can be anchored to the ground.
In terms of which parts of a cold frame are glazed traditionally just the top panels or ‘lights’ of the cold frame would have been glazed. However, it is now possible to purchase cold frames that have glazing on all sides as well as the top – this is much better for your plants as they will benefit from even sunlight resulting in healthy growth.
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Our blog posts are created from our personal knowledge, information gathered by speaking to other gardeners or manufacturers in the gardening industry, by reading gardening magazines and devouring information from books and the internet. We aim to be as accurate as we can, so if you find a mistake, please remember, we’re only human. if you have any queries you can contact us today!