Allotments 4 All
Allotment Stuff => The Basics => Topic started by: RenishawPhil on April 12, 2012, 13:44:23
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We inherritted four baths with our allotment.
Now could we make a hot bed by filling them full with manure and then planting in them?
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I've got carrots in mine. :D
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As a newbie, this is intriguing indeed, so here come the dumb questions! ???
What kind of temperatures do you expect to get in such a hotbed? I have seen manure heaps that are 'steaming hot'..... OK so the volume of muck will be different if restricted to the smaller quantities that a bath can hold, so accept the 'heat' will be less.
And what crops benefit from such heat? (apart from Kev's carrots ;D )
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Mines not a hot bed, I just mentioned what I use my bath for. :D
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Squash n pumpkins I hope banksy:)
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Thanks to Kev and others on here I used my baths for carrots and have been able to bring carrots home all winter and still got some. ;D Very pleased with this and definatly think it is a good use for old baths.
I guess that is not answering your qustion though- but I have never made a hot bed-sorry.
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When i say hotbed i just called it that because being full of manure it will get warm!
Do i need to ensure the is drainage the bottom or will this cause it to dry out to much:)
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surely for drainage one would just take out the plug ? :)
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It's not really big/deep enough .... from the old stuff I've seen (recent repeats of Victorian Kitchen Garden on the telly) I reckon you need about 4 feet square and 18" deep cos they don't really use the outside foot or so... the ones they built that size had a 2 foot lantern cloche (that I want so badly it hurts) tih a few bigger plant seedlings in, their forcing hotbed frames for things like out of season carrots were about three feet deep , and they'd dug down at least a foot by the look of things, and were a minimum of 8x6, and they were stacked up about five in a line so 30x8....