Selfsufficientish.com

I have been messing around with hotbeds for a while now, and I have now sorted out what I am doing with them. I have now built a hotbed propagator which is outside and is working really well. In spite of the outside temperatures dropping below 0c, the propagator has not dropped down below 7c on the very coldest night and during the day, it seems to be a steady 10-12c and rising if there is a bit of sun. Results are very pleasing, salad crops started off 3 weeks ago are now pricked out and in the polytunnel, sowed onion seeds and a few things like spinach, flower sprouts and Tuscan kale last Sunday 12th and I had germination by the 19th. Just made another one in my other compost bin. I will be doing this one a bit differently, I am putting screws into the post of the bin to put the ethylene pipe on as the compost in the other bin slumped more than I expected and the cover sunk a bit, but the pipes were quite long so I have adjusted them, putting the pipes on the posts will sort that little problem out.

So is this a special hot bed or is it your 'normal' compost bin that you're adapting to function as a hotbed whilst it's working away?

Cassiepod wrote:So is this a special hot bed or is it your 'normal' compost bin that you're adapting to function as a hotbed whilst it's working away?

Yes, these are my usual compost bins, I just collect up all the stuff I need, which only takes me a few weeks with all my animals and build the heap in one go. You can do the same thing within straw/hay bales and put windows on the top.

I think this would make a great article for the blog pages, dnd.

I agree. They look very good.

Gosh reminds me of the old Victorian gardening books I read where hot beds where used for all sorts of exotic things like pineapples. Now there's something to swat up on dnd - growing pineapples!

Did I forget to mention my pineapple plantation.