Prepping to #GrowYourOwn #VictoryGarden over winter utilizing the #wallOwater principle because physics is our friend. Experienced gardeners that get seasonal seed catalogs are familiar with the Wall O Water tomato enclosures sold by them for the purpose of frost-proofing young tomato plants in early spring.
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Filling up used soda bottles (2 liter) with water and arranging those into a coldframe formation can be effective for extending the growing season at both ends of it. When the coldframe walls are 2 bottles thick, you can grow cold season crops well past frost and past first freeze.
Adding strings of Christmas lights under the clear plastic tent/covering will give you all-winter produce. But I've taken that a step further still, utilizing even more physics aspects of water' heat exchange properties.Pure H2O freezes at 32F, 0C. Tap water isn't pure H2O and the dissolved material in it results in its freezing at a temp below 32F, and that's why "antifreeze" is a mix of glycol and water. Conversely, when heated, it also retains more heat because the boiling point has risen well beyond 212F....and that's when it's exposed to open air. Inside a sealed container where internal pressure can build, that raises the boiling point still further upward.
...and that's why you're not seeing many water-filled 2 liter pop bottles in the picture of my digs I attached. You see, last year I didn't have enough pop bottles to make a patch of that size but I did buy lots of jugs of vinegar that were on sale for pickling season, and in a pinch used those to make up the difference--only to discover that they're a better antifreeze than tap water by a long shot. So what you see here are jugs of pickling vinegar, a gallon apiece, bought on sale just for this coldframe purpose. It's got irrigation lines criss-crossing the bed, a couple of tomato cages in the middle to prop up a clear plastic covering, and a few strings of Christmas lights mounted on PVC conduit to run down the middle. By golly, I'm gonna grow my own all winter long. I'm in Ag Zone 7.
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Radio Free Trumpistan
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