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I no longer have a greenhouse and space for an (expensive) grow tent is unavailable, so I have been learning how to germinate seeds directly in the soil without heat pads or grow lights.

There's more to this situation that meets the eye. Because we get high winds throughout the fall and winter (last year an unusual gust of wind lifted a low tent up and over the raspberry and grape trellises, damaging the cover). As with the tractor shed

As an experiment, I am sowing directly in the raised bed in November - only a number of plants that germinate in cool soil (about 45 degrees). I'll see if I can grow in the off-season!

• Spinach ()Winter Bloomsdale)
• Radish (Rudi and Champion)
• Cabbage (Promax)
• Carrot (Nantes Supreme from Burpee)

That early experiment reset my expectations about growing in the winter, even in an enclosed structure - but here I go again.

As I was cleaning out dead plant matter one day in 2025 a neighbor stopped by and offered two skylights that had been at his house, but were removed because they were leaking. He wife is a gardener and she imagined their usefulness as clozes for plants in my garden.

I placed one of the skylights donated by a friendly neighbor at the edges of the raised bed several inches above the soil.

I have a data logger in the center of the garden to measure and log the ambient temperature.

In this version of experimental cold weather gardening I'm measuring and recording the average difference in temperature between the outside temperature and the temperature inside the low tent, day by day and throughout each day.