making a hot bed out of a bath?

[RenishawPhil]

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?

[RenishawPhil]

[cornykev]

I've got carrots in mine.   :D

[banksy]

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 )

[cornykev]

Mines not a hot bed, I just mentioned what I use my bath for.  :D

[RenishawPhil]

Squash n pumpkins I hope banksy:)

[pumkinlover]

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.

[RenishawPhil]

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:)

[mentallot]

surely for drainage one would just take out the plug ? :)

[chriscross1966]

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....