A 100-foot Meal in February

In January I reported on Path to Freedom website's 100 foot diet challenge (see Eating Local: Taking it to the Limit). While there's limited foraging opportunities in the winter garden, the climate here in the Pacific Northwest is mild enough that when the first glimmerings of spring are in the air in February, one can find at least a few edible green things.

So here's a 100-foot lunch that I concocted out of what I found around the garden today:

• Yukon Gold potatoes which had overwintered in the potato patch, sauteed in Tillamook butter (local product) and seasoned with fresh rosemary, sage, and chives.
• A salad of wild greens (Siberian miner's lettuce, violet leaves) and English violet blossoms, dressed with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.
• Herbal tea -- a mixture of dried lemon balm, dried rose petals, and dried spearmint gathered when each was in season. Sweetened with a little honey I have left from when my parents kept a beehive.
  

The Univent: It works! Hey, Mikey!

February gales have finally given way to a spell of good weather. We've had a few sunny days and temperatures sufficient to warm the inside of the cold frame. And by golly, the Univent was spotted in action, lifting the lid of the frame. Hoorah! After all the trouble the evil little device gave me, it finally works!

The little lettuce seedlings inside survived the freezing temperatures, and are now starting to put on a little bit of new growth. I'm looking forward to fresh lettuce in a couple of months.

While it's still officially winter, spring is just beginning to spring all over the garden. Leaf buds are swelling, and the early spring flowers are just now popping out, a little later this year than last. The Daphne are still in bud, but should blossom soon:
And these lovely little Blue Pearl crocus are popping up in the back yard. I'm going to have to get more of these and scatter them all over.

Organic Style now online

For a source of up-to-date information on going organic, check out the online edition of Organic Style. It includes gardening, health, home, beauty, and other aspects of organic living. Their free subscription will send you reminders when new issues come out. Free is always a good price, yes?

My New Mini-Pond

"A garden without water is not a garden at all. Even a back-yard should have a miniature water-lily in a tub."
Beverley Nichols, Garden Open Today

So if the terra cotta bird bath and the ground-level bird bath didn't make my garden a garden in Mr. Nichols' eyes, this little pond should do the trick, even if it doesn't sport a water lily nor any other plant life yet. Our oldest kitty, Mr. Licorice, thought it was just fine.

What is also does is enhance the value of the front garden to wildlife, which was my whole intent. Now that my Backyard Wildlife Habitat Scrapbook shows I've met my wildlife goals (at least three stars in every category except water, where I decided two would have do, since I haven't any convenient creeks, rivers, lakes, or oceans on my property), I'm ready to officially register. I attempted to do so online, but something went awry with the system and I'm not sure it rang up my credit card or not. If I don't hear something in a few days, I'll try again by mail.

Here's a view of the pond in the little woodland garden among the ferns. Come spring, the foxglove, lungwort, grape hyacinths, and hellebore will add some color, followed by the turtleheads that will bloom well into summer.


The pond itself was simple to make and took under an hour. I dug the hole to fit the spot, and smoothed out the soil around the edge where I intended to lay the flagstones. At one end I created a shelf where the water would be shallow for birds to splash in. The "deep end" is about a foot or so deep. I had an old but still flexible piece of black plastic that I doubled over and used to line the inside of the hole. (How long the black plastic will last I don't know. If it goes brittle and the pond leaks, it won't be too hard to pull everything apart and line it with a good pond liner.) Then I laid flat river rocks that I had in the back yard into the hole, covering the bottom and the sides as best I could. Some black plastic is still visible between the stones, but it doesn't show too badly. I laid the flagstones all around the edge, overlapping the edge just a bit, then trimmed the edges of the plastic so that they're covered by the flagstones. I may put a few more stones on the shelf part to make a better spot for butterflies to get a drink. I also want to move my saucer of wet sand near the pond for a butterfly puddling spot, since the pond itself will attract insects.

And that was it. Pretty simple. All in all, it felt good to get out in the garden after all the wild weather we've been having. Here's what wind, ice, and a little snow do to pansies and primroses:
But in spite of the foul weather, some little Valentine guys have been cavorting on my front porch for the last couple of weeks:

I see buds swelling on all the shrubs, and the Daphne are nearly ready to bloom. Now that Groundhog's Day/Candlemas/Imbolc/St. Brigid's Day have come and gone, spring is on the way.

Reading Dirt now on Helium!

To the left, I've added a list of articles I've written for Helium, ranging from a kinder approach to getting rid of moles, to a defense of garden snakes, to spring bulbs and gardening for wildlife.

If you haven't seen Helium yet, check it out. It's a community of writers writing articles on all sorts of subjects, and rating one another's articles. If your articles become popular, you may actually earn a little cash. There's also a Marketplace where online and print magazines request articles on particular subjects, for a higher payout if your article is chosen.

You can also earn a few pennies if you invite friends and they start earning cash for their articles. So if you're a writing enthusiast who has enjoyed this blog and wants an easy way to tip the gardener, send an email to bledsoek (stick the little @ sign here) gmail.com for an invitation to Helium. And thanks for your support.

The Literary Gardener Calendar -- now on sale!

From now until the end of February, my 2008 calendar, The Literary Gardener, is on sale for $15.99, marked down from $17.99. Get 'em while they're hot, because the calendar will go away at the end of February.

Also marked down is The 2008 Writer's Calendar, chock full of great writing prompts and inspirational photography.

And don't forget the e-book, So You Want to Grow Your Own Food, available free on this blog. Check out the link to the left. It's a large PDF document, so it may take a few minutes to download.

Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

The perpetuation of any species requires reproduction. If we want to help wildlife, we need to help assure that we'll have wildlife year after year. Nesting sites are a critical part of any backyard wildlife habitat.

Nesting boxes for cavity-nesting birds are easily built from pine or cedar. These boxes imitate natural cavities in dead trees. It's easy to find many plans and styles on the internet. Look for plans that include a swing-away wall or roof so that you can clean the box out at the end of nesting season. Different birds require boxes and entry holes of different sizes, so spend some time observing the birds that you have in your area and build nesting boxes suitable for them. Houses can be built for birds ranging from tiny wrens to screech owls. Leave the inside of the box rough, or score some groves on the inside under the entrance hole to help baby birds climb out. It's also a good idea to leave it unpainted so that it blends in with the background. Birds tend not to choose brightly-painted birdhouses that are too conspicuous. In addition to birds, squirrels will often use nesting boxes designed just for them.

Predators can be a real problem around nesting boxes. Raccoons, squirrels, cats, and rats will all prey on nestlings if they can reach them. A predator guard, a cylinder of wire mesh fixed to the front of the box, helps exclude predators.

Many birds prefer nesting platforms. These birds normally nest in the fork of a tree, but will often use a well-designed platform for nest construction. Other birds prefer to build nests in trees or thick shrubs. Just planting a tree in your yard if you have none already will vastly increase the value of your yard to wildlife.

Larger, permanent provide reproductive opportunities for amphibians and aquatic insects. Be sure to leave some debris in the bottom of the pond, and provide heavy rocks or drain tiles on the bottom to give protection from predators. If a pond is large enough and natural enough, it might even attract ducks.

Rock piles, brush piles, and log piles, discussed in the article on Cover, also provide nesting sites for some species of birds and for small mammals. Some insects and spiders lay their eggs in these piles, and they in turn provide food for many of the larger animals that use piles for nesting and hiding.

Butterflies seek out larval food plants for laying their eggs. Because so many people whisk out the pesticides at the first sign of caterpillar activity in their garden, reproductive opportunities for butterflies are limited in the suburbs. People don't often think that the green caterpillar that they despise is the infant form of the butterfly they admire -- or even if they do, they may still protest, "But I don't want those awful things eating my plants!" To assist butterflies, do some research on the internet to find out what butterflies are native to your area. Find out what kind of plants their larvae need, and plant these in a quiet, protected corner of their yard. Many will be native plants that need little care. If your larval garden is out of sight, perhaps your neighbors will never notice that you're providing a feast for caterpillars, and you can help boost the butterfly population in your neighborhood.

Food, water, cover, and nesting sites -- provide all four, and you'll soon see a lot more wildlife in your yard.

The entire Gardening for Wildlife series:
Gardening for Wildlife: The 4 Element
Gardening for Wildlife: Food
Gardening for Wildlife: Water
Gardening for Wildlife: Cover
Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

Gardening for Wildlife: Cover

The third element of wildlife gardening is cover. Animals are more likely to stay around if they feel safe, and to feel safe, they need places to hide. Prey animals particularly want safe havens where they can retreat if they feel threatened. Predators, too, including toads, lizards, and garter snakes needs a place to hide as they hunt, rest, and escape from their own predators.

Ground cover provides living cover for many small animals. Insects, including many ground beetles, hide under thick vegetation. I've seen patches of ivy where garter snakes thrived, safely hidden by the thick leaves while moving freely between the vines and eating up the slugs they found there. A variety of different ground covers will give animals a choice of the green cover they prefer. Depending on the sun exposure of your site, consider Lady's Mantle, vinca, creeping phlox, creeping thyme, Roman chamomile, verbena, veronica, and evergreen ferns such as sword fern planted thickly. Be cautious of ivy, which has become a noxious weed in many forests. Ajuga, also called bugle, can also make a pest of itself.

Evergreen shrubs, both broad-leafed and coniferous, provide year-around cover for small birds. Clip them loosely so that there is good protection, but so that the shrubs are still open enough for birds to easily get in and out of them.

Brush piles also make great cover for birds and small mammals. Find a quiet corner of your yard where the pile will seldom be disturbed, and that's not directly in your line of sight since a brush pile can look messy. Lay down some logs, thick branches, or scrap lumber to provide open space under the pile. Then when you prune your shrubs, pile up the twigs and branches until you have a stack that is several feet high. If you have them, fern fronds or cedar branches laid over the top help provide a little rain protection.

Log piles, too, will provide hiding places for many small animals. If you stack wood outdoors for the winter, keep an eye out for salamanders and many beetles and spiders that will hide there.

Rock piles are favored by reptiles. Stack heavy rocks in a sunny place, preferably near a concrete sidewalk, driveway, or patio. Reptiles like to bask on the warm concrete, and can retreat to the rock pile if danger threatens. A few flat stones beside the pile also provide a basking place, as does the pile itself. Be sure the stones are heavy enough that predators such as raccoons would have a difficult time pulling your rock pile apart.

Roosting boxes are useful for birds in the winter when the weather turns foul. Cornell has a good site on birds with instructions on How to Build a Roost Box. Bats, too, use roost boxes all through the year. The boxes should be places on the side of a house, high wall, or barn, at least ten feet above the ground. They can also be placed on the side of a tree if the trunk is clear of branches up to and somewhat above the roost box, but bats seem less inclined to use a tree-mounted box than a wall-mounted box. Be sure, though, that the box is placed where bat droppings won't be a problem. Here is a site that has several plans for building bat houses.

One thing to keep in mind as you make your plans, though, is to have little cover near bird feeders and bird houses. Birds feel safer if the ground near their feeding stations is open, with few places for predators to hide.

For your own safety, be aware that lots of thick shrubbery next to your house can give burglars a place to hide. People living in poisonous snake territory may want to limit the amount of ground cover they grow, and keep the lower branches of shrubs trimmed up to limit the places where poisonous snakes might lurk.

The entire Gardening for Wildlife series:
Gardening for Wildlife: The 4 Element
Gardening for Wildlife: Food
Gardening for Wildlife: Water
Gardening for Wildlife: Cover
Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

Gardening for Wildlife: Water

Water is a critical element in any wildlife garden. Food may be widely available, but water is often scarce, especially in the dry summer months but also during winter, when many water sources are frozen.

Even a simple bird bath like mine will help provide water. I made this one from three terra-cotta pots of increasing sizes glued together with silicone sealer, and a terra-cotta saucer glued to the top. I left it unadorned to blend in with the earth tones of the woodsy garden, but one could paint such a bird bath or decorate it with mosaic tiles. In addition, I have a ground-level bird bath which is simply a large plastic saucer meant for planters that I keep filled with water. A stone in the saucer gives birds a place to perch and bathe. The bird baths dry out quickly in the summer so I have to remember to keep them filled. I also have to remove the ice on freezing days.

Garden ponds are a good option for people with sufficient room and funds. A crystal-clear, sparkling pond looks lovely, but if you want one that will attract aquatic wildlife, let at least some debris accumulate in the bottom, and grow emergent plants in the pond. Also, don't plan to raise hungry fish, which will gobble up amphibian eggs and aquatic insects. If you're lucky, you may have dragonflies, frogs, or salamanders laying eggs in the pond. If possible, secure a concrete drain tile or similar protective structures to the bottom of pond to give your water creatures a safe haven when raccoons come looking for food.

Rain gardens are a less expensive option that can provide a small marsh or a pond, fed by runoff from your roof or a steep driveway. Rain gardens are located in a sunny spot at least ten feet from your foundations, in a place where the downspouts empty. The garden itself is constructed by leveling the spot and digging a hole several feet deep. The excavated soil can be used to build a berm around the hole if needed for leveling. The hole is backfilled with soil mixed with a lot of compost, peat moss, or other organic matter. A trench may be needed to direct water from the downspout into the rain garden. Plant the garden with marsh plants which love to have their feet wet. A rain garden may have standing water during your rainy season, and may dry out during hotter weather, so native plants that are adapted to your local weather are the best choice. Many of these plants will support butterfly populations. In addition to helping wildlife, rain gardens give runoff water a place to go besides the gutter and sewer system. For detailed instructions on constructing rain gardens, see the Rain Gardens of West Michigan website.

So get creative. Where can you incorporate a wildlife-friendly water feature in your garden?

The entire Gardening for Wildlife series:
Gardening for Wildlife: The 4 Element
Gardening for Wildlife: Food
Gardening for Wildlife: Water
Gardening for Wildlife: Cover
Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

Gardening for Wildlife: Food

The first of the four elements to provide for your wild visitors is food. While our first impulse is often to put out lots of bird feeders, the backbone of any wildlife feeding project should be food-bearing plants, preferably native plants.

Assess your yard as it is. Do you have plants that provide berries, nuts, or seeds? Do you provide plants that caterpillars can munch on? Are there plenty of nectar-producing flowers? If your yard is a little short on wild food, consider adding shrubs, trees, or herbaceous plants to create a wildlife cafeteria.

Here are some specifics to consider:

Butterflies
If you want butterflies, plant flowers, shrubs, and trees that will feed both adults and their larvae. Adult butterflies feed on nectar, but their larvae need the leaves of specific plants. Of course, that means that you will have to allow the larvae to feed on your plants, and not allow anyone to talk you into spraying for the voracious little things. Use the internet to find out which butterflies are common in you area, and the plants that they feed on. The Foremost Insurance Group has a nice list of the larval food plants and butterfly nectar plants in their butterfly garden. The Butterfly Site has great information on creating a butterfly garden.

In addition to flowers as nectar sources, you can also hang butterfly feeders in the garden. Here are instructions from All Free Crafts on how to make a butterfly feeder. Be aware, though, that open sources of sugary foods may attract hornets as well as butterflies.

Birds
Seed-eating birds will flock to bird feeders that are kept full. Don't fill them with cheap bird seed which contains filler seeds that birds don't like. Black sunflowers seeds are a good choice for most feeder birds throughout the year. Suet cakes are favored by many winter birds. Thistle or niger seeds will attract finches, especially goldfinches, and are a good summer food. Thistle should be offered in special thistle seed feeders. Be sure that feeders drain well to prevent the seeds from molding. Drill extra drainage holes in the bottom if you need to.

Be sure to provide lots of natural forage as well. Let your annuals go to seed, especially sunflowers, cosmos, and marigolds. If you have room, plant red-hot pokers, which attract hummingbirds and finches with their abundant nectar. Berries will attract fruit-eating birds, as anyone who has grown strawberries or blueberries can tell you! Try planting elderberry near your berry patch. Many fruit-eating birds favor the smaller elderberries over strawberries, and feel safer feeding from the taller elderberry shrubs instead foraging for strawberries on the ground. Serviceberry, rowan, Japanese aralia, and madrone all bear fruits that birds will feed on. The Japanese aralia, which grows well in full shade, provides winter fruit, and will be picked clean before winter is over. A wide variety of shrubs and plants will also attract an array of small insects, which provide forage for insect-eating birds.

For hummingbirds, provide plenty of nectar-rich flowers, such as honeysuckle, hardy fuchsia, red salvia, and hummingbird mint. Supplemental feeders should be filled with a syrup made of one part table sugar to four parts water. Sucrose -- table sugar -- is the same sugar found in natural flower nectar. Do not use honey, which can cause liver problems, and of course don't use artificial sweeteners which have no food value at all. Be sure the feeder is sparkling clean at all times to prevent fungal infections.

But think carefully...
There are some animals that you don't really want to attract. In our neighborhood I've seen raccoons, opossums, rats, and skunks. Raccoons are adorable and fun to watch -- until they break into your house and raid your cupboards. They're intelligent animals with dexterous paws and can learn to turn doorknobs. Besides the potential for raccoon break-ins, raccoons can harbor rabies, roundworms, and distemper. They also kill kittens may kill adult cats -- though I watched a big orange tabby tree a young 'coon once. 'Possums can break into sheds and houses, and can get into fights with cats. Rats are great for spreading disease, and can find all sorts of ways to get into houses. As for skunks, I think we all know why we don't really want them in the back yard!

To make your home less attractive to pesky sorts of wildlife, the number one rule is don't feed them! Don't leave pet food out at night, and be sure to secure all garbage cans. Don't even store pet food outside in one of those fancy containers with the screw-on lid. Raccoons can figure out how to get them open. I put our kitchen waste into an Earth Machine composter which has a fairly secure lid. This helps reduce the amount of food available to pests. Only weeds and other garden waste go in the open bins.

The entire Gardening for Wildlife series:
Gardening for Wildlife: The 4 Element
Gardening for Wildlife: Food
Gardening for Wildlife: Water
Gardening for Wildlife: Cover
Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

Gardening for Wildlife: the 4 elements

And by 4 elements, I don't mean earth, air, fire, and water. I mean four things that wildlife need to survive and thrive. Since I've issued forth a challenge of creating wildlife habitat in your yard, I suppose the least I can do is offer some instructions. The National Wildlife Federation website, which I linked to in the last post, has quite a bit of information for getting people started.

Nevertheless, here are the basics. I'll expand on these in the next posts.

Food: A habitat must provide wildlife with something to eat. Natural food is preferred, so think in terms of native shrubs, grasses, flowers, and trees that provide sustenance for native animals.

Water: A reliable source of drinking water can be hard to come by. You can attract more wildlife with a small pond than with a dozen bird feeders. Anything from a simple bird bath to an enormous koi pond can add wildlife value to your yard.

Cover: Animals need safe places to hide from predators and to rest. Birds, for example, can hide in shrubs, brush piles, or brambles to avoid marauding cats. Small reptiles appreciate rock piles. Bats often use roosting boxes. Does your yard provide places for small animals to hide?

Nesting sites: While not necessary for the survival of individuals, nesting sites are critical for the survival of a species. Bird houses are good for cavity nesting birds, but other birds prefer platform nests or thick brush for hiding their nests. Frog and aquatic insects may reproduce in a garden pond. And butterflies will lay their eggs on certain plants that their larvae eat.

The entire Gardening for Wildlife series:
Gardening for Wildlife: The 4 Element
Gardening for Wildlife: Food
Gardening for Wildlife: Water
Gardening for Wildlife: Cover
Gardening for Wildlife: Nesting Sites

An Earth Day gardening challenge

Yes, it's still three months until Earth Day 2008, on April 22nd. So there's lots of time to take on my Earth Day challenge and complete it before Earth Day itself rolls around.

What's behind this: I've long been interested in the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Habitat program. I've included wildlife-friendly features as I've worked on improving different parts of my yard, including native plants, a birdbath, nesting boxes, rock and brush piles, and a runoff garden. While I meet the minimum qualifications now, there are a couple more projects I want to complete before I apply for certification and buy one of the nifty metal yard signs that says "Certified Wildlife Habitat." My goal is to be done with my projects, register, and have the yard sign by Earth Day this year.

The challenge: How many Reading Dirt readers will have gardens (or other spots of land that you can influence, like workplace or church grounds, etc.) that qualify as a backyard habitat (whether you choose to officially register or not) by Earth Day 2008? If you have native plants, feeding stations, water features, and shrubs or other cover, you might already qualify.

Here's what to do:

1. Go to the Garden for Wildlife page and look over the information.
   
2. Read about the Basic Elements for getting started.
   
3. To find out if you meet the minimum requirements, go to the Certification page, and download the printable PDF application.
4. If you want, you can keep an online scrapbook of your progress.
   
5. When your yard (or other spot of land that you can influence) qualifies, post a comment here. You might want to bookmark this post for later reference.
   

Eating Local - Taking it to the Limit

If you haven't seen the Path to Freedom website, check it out, and discover how a family is making a living by homesteading in Pasadena, California. Yes, Pasadena. California. Home of ridiculously high land values and a stratospheric cost of living.

Homesteading.

You might expect people as nuts... er, as ambitious as that to issue forth an equally ambitious challenge. And here it is: The 100 Foot Diet Challenge. They figure, as many of us gardeners do, that a 100 mile diet is all well and good, but why buy food that has traveled 100 miles if you can grow the same food in your own yard?

The challenge isn't to get all of your food from your own yard all of the time, which is a good thing. Grain takes more room that a suburban backyard has to raise, and some of us live in communities that forbid keeping livestock, even poultry, within the city limits. The challenge is to do what we can to eat an entirely homegrown meal at least once a week. If some part can't be homegrown (like oil, butter, or vinegar), then buy local, fair trade, or organic.

The challenge might be a bit hard for northerners to pull off at this time of the year, but the website does include the words, "as soon as you can." That is, I may not be able to serve up a mixed-greens and tomato salad from my garden right this minute, but I can lay out my garden plans and order seeds so that later in the summer, I can have that salad.

Besides the "greenness" of it all, there's a deep sense of satisfaction from serving up a meal and saying, "All this food you're eating? I grew it!" Or, "Look, everyone, this is as fresh as fresh gets!" So who else wants to get on board with this challenge?

Spring is a-comin' - Let the chores begin!

I know spring is springing soon because the snowdrops are in bloom. I took a flower's-eye view of the first blossoms of 2008 in my front garden. There were a few violets, too, a bit worn from the spate of bad weather, but with a certain rugged, "I don't care if it's January, I'm blooming, okay?" look about them.

After a thick morning fog, the sun came out briefly, and the rain held off, so I could actually get some work done. Among my tasks was setting out the cold frame. There's a mostly sunny spot in the front, with some shrubby conifers backing it, where the frame fit well, so I dug up the soil, added the last bag of cheap discount-store potting mix from the carport (lousy potting soil, but okay for making clay soil a bit lighter), and after setting the frame in place, raked loose mulch and leaves around it to add some insulation.



The bushy pine behind it got a severe cutting back, since it was sprawling all over the place. Not something I planted -- it came with the house. I left a single leader, and I'll see if I can train it better. Once the frame was in place, I planted my lettuce seedlings that I started a while back:


The bottles of water are heat sinks. And if the temperature drops below freezing, they'll release small amounts of heat as they freeze, protecting the seedlings. Of course, it would also help if I put a blanket of Reemay or bubble wrap over the seedlings if frost threatens.

And this? No, it's not an encampment for the Grand Order of Garden Elves:


It's a pair of tunnel cloches for my little kale plants. I used Gro-Therm Perforated Film over hoops of thin bamboo for a little protection from the weather. I've used it with overwintered lettuce before, though the lettuce needed more protection in frosty weather (which I supplied with a large sheet of bubble wrap, an office discard). Kale, which is a lot more frost-hardy, should do fine.

A little Sluggo sprinkled around will keep marauding slugs in check. In a couple of months, I should have some fresh garden greens. Yay!

Return of the Univent

The cold frame that I got for Christmas (see Christmas Loot!) has been awaiting better weather so that I could put it to use. At long last the sun emerged today, and I got a few outdoor chores done. I also dragged the cold frame out from the garage and into the living room to try installing the evil Univent one more time, this time without injuring my fingers.

The difficulty before was that the jaws of the thing stayed wide open when the temperature-sensitive cylinder was in place, making it difficult to install. It was also devilishly hard to get the cylinder in place without the jaws snapping shut and causing bodily harm.

Then it hit me -- the cylinder is temperature sensitive! It closes the lid or greenhouse window or whatever when the temperature is cold!

Well, okay, genius, I thought, put the contraption in the freezer. Duh.

As you can see from the picture, the jaws are closed when the cylinder is cold. Okay, so I took the cylinder itself out of the freezer, installed it in the jaws, and put them back for the photo. But this conveys the idea.


Things would have been so much easier if the company had just put that little tidbit in the instructions.

The next challenge was actually installing the Univent in the cold frame, make all the more difficult when I discovered that the screws I needed were missing. After finding a packet of screws of suitable size in the basement tool box, I set to work. One difficulty still remained: the metal bracket that holds the redwood slats together in the lid is smack in the way of the metal pad on the Univent that needs to be screwed to the lid. I had to do a little jury-rigging with some bits of metal, but I think this will do, since the metal pad only had to push the lid up:

The shot is taken as the cold frame sits upside-down in my living room. Thus it is the bottom of the lid that you see, and the bits sticking out on the right are the bits I had to put in there to make the thing sit right.

Now to find out if it actually works in the real world. I found a place for it outdoors. If the sun comes out tomorrow and warms the inside up, I'd better see it open the lid, or the evil thing is definitely going back where it came from.