Horse pucky hotbed

[GrannieB]

Gosh,we haven't even seen the first offical day of winter and I'm already itching to gets some veggies going. :cool: My garden calender says I can start,radish,spinach,onion sets and turnips directly outside now and in Jan. if I want to build a hotbed,I can start beets,broccoli,brussel sprouts,carrot,radishes and cauliflower.

Have any of ya'll used hotbeds and how da heck do you put one together. I have lots of horse puckies. How long do horse puckies stay hot? :confused: I remember seeing hotbeds on Victory Garden when they went to Monticello but that's been too long ago. :o

[GreenZone]

Grannie,
I've done it. It isn't hard, but then again it takes some experience to do it well. The main thing is to not get it too hot, which you do by monitoring the temp and not sowing until it's cooling off. But in my experience it only stays warm a couple or three weeks, so timing becomes very important. My advice is do it experiementally at first till you gain experience.
--Randel

[GrannieB]

Probably something I should not try then 'cause I'd get busy and would forget to check it.....Back to the drawing board.

[GreenZone]

Grannie I certainly didn't mean to discourage you from doing it. It really is a fine low-tech device. All I meant was to ease into it and don't put all your eggs in one basket till you know how to make it work. Heck discussing it has made me start thinking in that direction....
--Randel

[scakya]

Hi,
Have to agree, give it a try!!! Got my brain juices flowing as fresh horse hocky is something we have in fair amount. Just cleaned out a cold frame this past weekend and am putting on an extension to raise it a bit today and will use your idea for the hot bed. Just what the gardner in me needed, more green growey stuff!!!! )

scakya

[GrannieB]

Well,I wouldn't be making a huge bed 'cause I only have 2 horses and one lil donkey. While they produce a bit of puckies, they don't produce that many puckies. :D

Hmmmm?Now what to use to build a cold frame. :confused: What seeds to try? :confused: Ok,so say I'm gonna do a small coldframe...oooohhh...about 6-8ft.long by 2 ft.wide.What if I dig down a shovel deep(12"),put my puckies in this trench,surround trench with concrete blocks then toss back in garden soil ammended with compost on top of that. Blocks are possibly 12"tall so with leaving head room for growing seedlings the depth of soil from top of puckies would be apx.8 inches.How far away from seedlings roots should puckies be in order to be effective heat source?I'll hub's build top from left over greenhouse film or double to triple layer of remay?Remay's about 6 yrs old so it's needing replaced but being the chea....um....frugal gardener I am,I like to get the last hurrah from every thing. :D

[scakya]

Hi Granny,
What you have described is one of my favorite "pit" beds. They are used the world over from the heights of the Bolivean Andes plateau to the Himalyan side of India which is much colder than my 5b growing zone.
From my experience, and one horse, that fresh manure left to break down over a few weeks is what I plant in when it cools down. You can grow any cold hardy veggie in the cold frame and if a bit squeamish, you can add your compost and the soil removed intially. What is important about what you suggested is the cement blocks as they do collect some solar gain, but uninsulated from the ground around them, much of the gain is immeadately transferred to the colder ground around it.
My own experiments have shown insulation even a couple of inches is superior to none. I use foam and at a four inch depth in my pit bed arrangements. I am in putting one together right now and will have it up and going in mid-January.
Sides and bottom are insulated with a twin layer of plastic door on top. At night, I cover that with an insulated cover to help retain heat.
Hopes this gives you some ideas,
scakya

[justdoit]

Granny, how did it work out? You described pretty much what my grandfather (from 1800s) told me to do to start your garden plants early in the spring. OR, he said they would build and burn a large brush pile, then move a frame with windows over the heated ground to start seed in.

In your warm zone, you can probably uncover the bed on most days, so I wondered if you could do temporary hot beds on top of the ground... surrounded with square bales of straw? Might work really well on a S or SSW slope. On the other hand, you may not have many slopes in zone 8 AR. Just my peabrain working over time. I love to do straw bale cold frames... horse pucky would change it into a hot bed. I don't think you need to worry about it if you have 6-8 inches of soil over the top. The roots won't go there if it's too warm and by the time they do, it would be cooled off anyway.

[slug slayer]

Just read this yesterday as I am trying to figure out how to heat a winter green house-
Basically what ya'll already said

this is from "The New Seed-Starters Handbook" by Nancy Bubel

1. Dig rectangular hole three to four inches larger all around than the coldframe dimensions and 1.5 - 2 feet deep
2. a week to 10 days before planting pack horse or chicken manure into hole up to 6 inches from soil level
3.hose this layer down to start decomp
4.spread 6 inches of fine soil on top of manure
the manure should reach its peak temp w/in 3-6 days (ofcourse this depends on where you are)wait to plant until temp of soil falls to 85F- ventilate to keep bed below 90 F