Why A Self-Opening Cold Frame?
It’s simple: gardeners today are busier than they ever have been before. If you leave the lid on your cold frame closed on a sunny day, the air gets hot and can damage or kill the plants inside. If you leave the lid on your cold frame open during a frosty night, the air gets cold and can damage or kill the plants inside. You may be the type of person that can remember to open or close your cold frame every weekday and weekend day… Or you might not be. The Common Sense Cold Frame is for the people that want to enjoy the great benefits of a cold frame without the hassle of managing one.
The two self-openers on the top panels will automatically keep your plants from overheating or freezing if you forget to manage the cold frame! This makes it the perfect companion for today’s urban gardener. The openers expand when the temperature inside the frame reaches 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and open the front approximately 4” to allow warm air out of the front of the frame. Those same openers close when the internal temperature cools, which keeps your plants comfortably warm through the dark of night. The openers do all of this without you having to lift a finger – using a little bit of industrial magic and a bit of good old-fashioned common sense!
Commercial greenhouse operators have used these self-openers for many years, but always in permanent installations, and generally at higher temperatures. We worked for a long time to come up with a self-opening system that was easy to use no matter how old you are or how many vegetables you have in your arms. (Our patent attorney is proud of us for the work that we did on the system.) The long “stirrup” makes it easy to insert and couple the self-openers to the top panels, and the opening hardware itself swings out of the way to save lots of room for vegetables inside the cold frame.
These amazing self-openers require no power – they rely on a mineral wax that expands and contracts at 55 degrees Fahrenheit. They will provide years of service with nothing more than the normal cycling of temperature outside the frame!
An automatic, non-powered cold frame self-openers that can be attached and detached with one hand and that doesn’t require power or any kind of thermostat? Compared to any other cold frame on the market, we believe that ours is the only Common Sense Cold Frame. Enjoy!