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I live in Northern Virginia on the cusp of USDA plant hardiness zones 7a and 7b which means I can get annual extreme minimum temperatures between 0 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit. We just had a very cold night where the temperatures were forecast to dip to 6 degrees in my neighborhood so I wanted to make sure my more tender plants had some extra warmth.
In past posts I have shared the cold frame structure I have built up against my house. It easily provides 5 to 10 degrees of additional warmth just by being closed and up against a heated house. You can see in the image above that a basement window is inside the structure, and this is one easy way to boost the temperature in the structure when needed.
Last night I closed up the shelter and cracked the basement window just a fraction of an inch to allow air from the heated basement to warm the space. When I checked this morning, the outside temperature was at 8 degrees, and the thermometer inside the cabinet read 20 degrees. This is exactly what I was hoping for. The trees stored there are experiencing freezing temperatures, but not the single digits they would have experienced without the shelter.
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