torsdag 18 april 2013

How to make a hotbed!



Right, here comes gardening for a change! Was at it whole day yesterday, and unfortunately did not quite finish due to stubborn compost...

But here is a pictorial guide to hotbed making.

1. Select your area and remove turf. Here you can see that I used link-a-boards to give some more edge to the bed. This means I didn't have to dig that deep. I'd recommend these handy plastic boards to anyone! They are durable (mine have lasted without any cracks or problems already at least 6 years or so), lightweight and really easy to put up or dismantle. Excellent invention! But indeed, this bed is then approximately 25-30cm at its lowest depth. Keep the turf! As you can see, I put it on a tarp to wait until I needed it again. I found that removing the turf was really easy now when the grass has not yet started to grow after winter. I cut the turf into smaller squares with a quite flat spade and then picked them up with a fork. Worked amazingly easy.


2. After removing the turf, remove any visible nasty weeds.  


3. Shovel soil out into tubs or on tarp. I've got 3 90 litre and one 70 litre tubs full. Remove enough soil so that you have a nice depth for the bed. 25 cm depth should do. The linkaboards are 15cm, so I didn't have to dig but about 10cm more; and most of that was turf. If you have moles about, remember at this point to lay down chickenwire on the bottom! That will hopefully prevent the blighters from getting into your crop!


4. And now begin to build the mound! First in goes twigs and minor branches. I went around the garden pruning all the roses and thornbushes... Perfect place to put those nasty cuttings! And in went also our chirstmastree remains. Make a pile of them in the middle of the bed, that is, don't spread them all across the bed. The idea is to make a mound. Also, leave space twig-free in the ends.


5. Next lay down the turf again. Lay it the grass-side down and roots up. Now you can see the mound-shape forming. That is, you cover the twig-mound with upsidedown turf. One layer is ok, but you can put two layers of turf as well. Remember to 'close' the mound also from the ends.


6. Time to add in all that lovely leafmould you raked in last autumn! 5 cm of wet leaves on top of the turf. And a bit of soil mixed in.


7. And here is the last photo of the day. I have added 5-10cm of straw-muck. Fresh from the nice neighbours! Strawless horsepoop is good as well, but not as good. Straw makes the energy release slower, and it is a lot better in this case. Poop with lots of shavings is not optimal at all... because shavings takes quite a while to compost and is not so good for growing crops. We did make a hotbed with shavings-poop once and it did work fine, but we were careful to muck out so that we took only very little shavings with the poop.

Next items to go on:
8. Adding half rotten compost.
9. Adding a mix of topsoil and mature compost.
And there is your hotbed ready for use!

Will add the last photos later on, when the weather agrees: at the moment it is pissing down over here! No weather for digging into stubborn compost heap! Older one was frozen up still and the one we used during winter was incredibly difficult to get into via the low hatch. I think I will just remove the compost container and shovel things around...
I'll also enlighten you about the plants that work best during the first hotbed year next time.

Go on, get digging, it's fun!

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