Other than a small diagram and writeup in my copy of The New Illustrated Gardening Encyclopaedia this was my introduction to the productive joy in using a bit of fermenting manure to give your plants a good start in life even if the frosts come back again and again well into march and april.
Following a lead from one of the most incredibly proactive members of the permaculture course at offshoots last year i headed over to yorkshire for my first glimpse into growing using hot beds.
initially a box is created with sides made from wood lined on the inside with cardboard and tied together reasonably securely with string see pictures above in order to hold it all together.
Jack started the day with a good introduction about why hotbeds are useful and how being up in yorkshire it makes perfectly good sense to use a bit of gardeners ingenuity to ensure his plants catch a bit of extra growing time on top of our already grim growing conditions.
jack gave us a walk round to look over the beds and told us why we needed to keep our "lights" clean if we want our plants to get the best start in life. Lights are the panes of plastic he uses to cover his hotbeds.
i always start these courses with the best mood excited to know a bit more about gardening and also to learn from a knowledgeable and honest person who is happy to share his lifetime of experience to all us interested students.
Manure is the main ingredient in jacks hotbeds and he had plenty of it in his allotment. Manure is good when its base material is straw along with the all important horse poo. I have been told that manure with woodchip is actually not so good as it takes away nitrogen from the soil that the plants really need to grow !
here are some healthy sunken beds with plenty of growth in them all healthy looking salad plants Palco Spinach, French Breakfast Radish, Bolthardy Beetroot, Tokyo Cross Turnip and in some of the beds Potatoes!
Jack initially came across reasonably stern in his approach to teaching but it was just his way of letting us know that we had lots to get through and he had a large amount of information he was keen to share with plenty of mucking in for everyone so that we all had a go at actually helping to construct the hotbed as well as learning a great deal of the why's and wheres of the actual construction.
manure should be fresh as possible for the hotbed to give as much heat as it can in order to protect your plants from frosts and keep them cosy and warm all through the end of winter and into spring. Jack showed us a little hot water bottle he'd had in the top of the manure for just 24 hours and the thing was up to 66 C after just 24 hours! this was proof enough for me that this technique was way more than just hot air.
Below is a picture of Jack putting in the cardboard edging on the inside of the wooden frame to help the manure stay enclosed and not falling about around the site. We punched holes in the side of this cardboard membrane so as to allow the manure to breathe. Jack was passionate about his manure and he made sure that it got a good amount of air and also some water as he mentioned that the micro organisms that do the work in the manure are not so different in their needs to humans.
in the foreground of this picture is another one of Jacks beds with a water tank inside it so that he always has hot water on site to wash his hands or to water his plants he mixes his hot water with a bit of regular rain water so the plants don't get a shock.
as it says in my encyclopaedia the length of the heat that you will get from a hotbed depends on the height of the pile of manure that you use. The higher the pile the stronger the core will be and the heat will last longer. Jack said that if you can only get a certain amount of manure then its better to make a smaller area of hotbed rather than spread the manure thinly over a wide area of land.
we all got stuck in and made sure that the manure was evenly distributed in the framework so as to remove any air pockets or clumps of heavy stuff as this could lead to the bed sinking unevenly later on and putting your seedlings at risk before they had chance to be harvested.
i'd heard of manure being pushed up against the walls of greenhouses to protect the plants inside from the seriously bad colds in the winter.
Jack did have a greenhouse as well but he said he preferred his method of outdoor growing giving the plants a chance to breathe and he took off the lights each day he was there so that he could clean them or just let the plants get the full power of the suns rays !
The manure level in the hotbed is reaching around waist high things are starting to look good.
Everyone did a bit of shovelling to make sure we all got a bit of hands on experience actually creating the thing. Jack also made sure we were all invited to come back to see its progress in the coming months as the plants we helped to grow would be growing towards the summer sunshine.
Jacks favorite manure fork
The toilet facilities were simple but good.
our beds with lines pressed in with a bit of wood (Cut to measure) so that all the dips are equal and this ensures that all the seedlings arrive at the same time
the soil we used for the compost was beautiful soil from last years rotted hotbeds and it was lovely lovely stuff. in this process you don't get any waste at all really everything is reusable as long as you take care with it and construct it well enough.
happy seedlings in rows including a few gaps where the mice got in and nicked the fast growing radishes. The mice don't seem to like the spring onions ! Jack said that he planted some of his seeds as early as the end of january with the power of these wonderful hotbeds i think that is absolutely amazing he is growing his plants for a whole month or two extra sunlight and although its not the best time of year for sun it still provides the plants with protection that they need to survive so that when the sun really does come out they are already big enough to do their photosynthesis !
One of Jacks seed packets from a company that he likes, organic untreated and reliable !
as we were coming to the end of the day we planted the seeds in the bed even though you should really leave the bed to settle for a few days before planting in it .
i think its safe to say we all had a great day learning from this man in yorkshire showing us how to construct our own hotbeds. Jack let us know in no uncertain terms why this way of growing really is a good idea all round. Its simplicity and cyclic perfection provides both a longer growing season and protection for your plants so that you can get them in the ground weeks and even months before other people might try theirs. By the end of the day i was inspired and sure that Jack was onto something really special here with his unique technique. Jacks writing a book about hot beds that will be available soon.
I found out about this course from
http://wyog.org/tag/hot-bed/ There is a good short writeup on there about last years course too. Jack has since let me know that the radishes and salad leaves we planted are all ready for harvesting now, thats impressive !
well worth the bus journey into yorkshire !
