[CH] Hot beds
F. Eugene (dunnam@phys.ufl.edu)
Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:58:58 -0400
Greetings-
There's a pretty good & comprehensive 'how-to' hot bed description online at:
http://www.ianr.unl.edu/pubs/horticulture/g836.htm
Having done this in my youth on the farm & again 20 years later as an
experiment [it was just as much work as I remembered!] I now grow all
of my seedlings in the house, in recycled yoghurt cups! But for a
lot of plants & if you have a source of fresh manure the old
'natural' hotbed works fine, provided you get the timing right. You
must seed the bed & start the manure 'heater' [by watering the bed]
such that the weather is moderating [no hard freezes] by the time the
composting heat has died off. Also you want to transplant the
seedlings out of the hotbed before they get too big for it, which
requires that most of the frosty nights have ended [unless you want
to be madly covering plants every night!].
--Gene
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* Gator Slide Farm *
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