Can I use this cold frame instead of a greenhouse

[freckles20]

I have a coldframe / mini greenhouse as shown in the attached image.

I am an inexperienced gardener and would like to try growing some things from seed this year. I can see that lots of instructions talk about moving things from windowsill to greenhouse and then onto a cold frame.

I am hoping that my coldframe might act in the same was as an unheated greenhouse (albeit it smaller and more flimsy)? I have it weighted down and it is pretty sturdy.

Can anyone tell me if they are interchangeable please ?

That is a mini greenhouse I think, not a cold frame?

That is a green house. A cold frame is like a clear box on the ground with a lid. So yes, you can absolutely use it as a greenhouse

Well. I have a cold frame and it looks just like that?

It’ll be fine, you want to close the doors overnight for a few weeks and open them in the morning as it can get hot during the day and scorch the plants if we get a particularly hard frost you can always insulate it further with some bubble wrap.

Depending on what and how much you want to grow, what you have at the moment is really only for propagating seeds and growing saplings. So you would simply buy a few trays (seed trays), fill them with compost, add seeds and water, then put them into your greenhouse/cold frame to propagate.

Then when they grow into saplings, and eventually get tall enough, you will need to repot and/or relocate them elsewhere depending on what plant type they are. Eg if you want to grow tomato plants, then you'd start them off in there from seed. But then once the saplings have grown quite big (6inches+), you will need to transplant them, either plant them straight into a compost bag outside, and use the compost bag as the planter (2 saplings per compost bag), or plant them into another pot outside (one sapling per pot), or into raised bed.

Otherwise if you only wanted to use your greenhouse/coldframe then you may just have to limit what you grow, and just do one or two things from seed. Then when the saplings get bigger, take some of the shelves out so there's room inside, repot the saplings into individual bigger pots on the bottle shelf, and let them carry on growing vertically inside there.

It can get very hot in those even if it’s only mildly sunny. You’ll have to make sure you open it up on all but the coldest/wettest days. But they’re perfectly good for raising seeds as long as you do that.

That’s not a cold frame. A cold frame is a box on the floor with a glass lid.

I guess mini greenhouses that you can’t get into aren’t a traditional item, so there isn’t really a name for them, and perhaps some manufacturers are calling them cold frames to distinguish them from proper greehouses

perhaps some manufacturers are calling them cold frames to distinguish them from proper greehouses

They are doing. I’ve seen it repeatedly.

Yes, mine looks just like that and was described as a cold frame.

I've seen them referred to as Growhouses

Thank you all for your replies. I can see that the structure that I have has several different names!

It sounds like I can use it in a similar way to an unheated greenhouse (albeit tiny), but need to be mindful that it could get very hot so need to open the top and front when it is sunny.