5 ms·

How to Make a Hotbed for the Earliest Sowings (2020)

115 points by teleforce 4y ago

Eric_WVGG 4y ago
> From the Roman Emperor Tiberius to the Victorian gardeners of a few generations ago, hotbeds are nothing new. I had no idea Tiberius was a farmer.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  Most people were through most of history. When subsistence farming was the primary way of life, it makes sense that kings and emperors were administrators of, and involved in, farming - Or as we'd call them today "Farmers" as opposed to "Farmhands". It is from this that we get Bread and Circuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
  - dmreedy 4y ago
    While this is all true (and I think the parent is mostly a joke...), my understanding is that the Roman aristocracy that Tiberius was born into considered themselves Farmers in the same way that the modern American politician identifies with the Small Business Owner (or indeed, if you go far enough back, the Yeoman Farmer). It was more a moral/identity narrative than a thing they actually did. They certainly owned the villas but whether they engaged in any way with the actual work (even in the capacity of "boss") of such places... maybe their servants, or their wives...
    - ggm 4y ago
      Surely Cato the Elder's writing on the economic exploitation of slaves points to a degree of detail in the disposition of cost/benefit against their production? Other fictional writing I read suggests engagement in "trade" was beneath the senatorial classes, and so acquisition of land and it's economic exploitation underwrote what was considered "acceptable" sources of revenue. Oddly, not entirely unlike the British Landed classes. They didn't like to admit that their land holdings had coal mines, where sheep gently grazing was acceptable.
      - dmreedy 4y ago
        > Surely Cato the Elder's writing Cato was, incidentally, a novus homo, not born into a Patrician family. His father was a pleb and a soldier and a farmer, and he was as well. > Other fictional writing I read suggests engagement in "trade" was beneath the senatorial classes [...] Oddly, not entirely unlike the British Landed classes Yeah, the vibe I get was that this was a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Yeah, the vibe I get was that this was a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies. Yes, commerce and labor are both taboo for elites in most premodern societies. There are some obvious exceptions; the Phoenicians wouldn't have seen anything wrong with engaging in commerce.
        inawarminister 4y ago
        Yeah, many trading cultures never had this injunction: for example Malay sultans rise and fall with the prosperity of their entrepots, exporting spices and rice and importing chinaware and Indian riches. * On the other hand... Confucianism puts merchants as one of the lower members of society, because they do not add value as artisans. Edo Japan famously had caste of samurai on the top, farmers on the middle, and merchants on the lowest.
        scns 4y ago
        > a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies My prejudice would be that new money (by trade) is still looked down upon by old money (inherited/landowners/dynasties). By those with low self-esteem.
        dmreedy 4y ago
        > By those with low self-esteem Exactly the prejudice such old money would (and to your point, still does) hold against "merchants".
  - Eric_WVGG 4y ago
    I had no idea Tiberius was a farmhand.
- sweettea 4y ago
  Diocletian retired from emperoring to his pride and joy, growing cabbages, and refused folks' urgings to take the throne again.
  - hammock 4y ago
    Inspired Gladiator perhaps
    - ramses0 4y ago
      (did you ever watch Failsafe, by the way?)
      - hammock 4y ago
        Yes. It was awesome. Thanks for the reco
    - gattilorenz 4y ago
      And the very fun play “Romulus der Große” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, probably. With hens instead of cabbages.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    Not my Cabbages! Perhaps he was an inspiration to the Avatars cabbage guy.
- blacksqr 4y ago
  He did a lot of plowing.
- southernplaces7 4y ago
  Many Roman emperors moonlighted into other interests during their lives. emperor Domitian, son of the emperor Vespasian, for example, wrote what is considered to be one of the world's first known books on hair care for balding men, as a balding man himself who was quite sensitive about his look. Also, it was a largely agrarian society, so even an emperor could have had a few turns at managing fields at some point in their life. When Diocletian, the first of the "Dominate" era emperors, voluntarily left power (the only emperor ever to do so), he returned to his palatial fortress on the Croatian coast to pursue gardening and especially cabbage farming. At one point after his retirement, a group of senators from Rome was dispatched to visit him and convince him to go back into the purple due to the collapse of the tetrarchic system he'd set up for Imperial administration. While the senators argued with him, Diocletian famously brought them to his garden and pulled out one of his own cabbages. He then asked the senators how they could expect him to possibly come back to the stresses of Rome when he had managed to raise such beautiful cabbages in the peace of his new home.
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    Also, there was no Netflix back then, and, like, four books to read. What else were you going to do?
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      Conquer and pillage?
    - southernplaces7 4y ago
      Joke aside, to wealthy and powerful Romans of the time, many thousands, maybe tens of thousands of books and tracts would have been available, possibly even to middle class people. There were even publishing industries and trends akin to reduced versions of today's best seller phenomenon. Someone like Diocletian, Vespasian or his son Domitian wouldn't have had much trouble with interesting literature.
      - saalweachter 4y ago
- devnullbrain 4y ago
  The awkward phrasing is SEO spam.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> Take your pick from a multitude of cold-season vegetables – beets, carrots, lettuce and other salad leaves, onions, spinach, chard, radishes and turnips – and sow knowing that you’ll be picking and plucking within weeks. Lettuce is one of those vegetables, that once it gets contaminated with bacteria, you are kind of screwed. You can really wash it off and lettuce is usually eaten raw. Having it grown in a pile of manure may make it harder to keep from being contaminated.
- chongli 4y ago
  You can totally cook lettuce and eat it. It's healthy and tastes just fine. A quick blanch in boiling water is all it takes.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Cos or Romaine hearts cut into quarters and whacked on a grill for some charring is pretty good too. "Horta" is any green leaves you like, blanched and served with oil and lemon. Sure, it tends to be Dandelion or Rocket or whatever, but I don't think it's specified by the greek ya-yas, its whatever is to hand.
    - bradknowles 4y ago
      Grilled Hispy (?) Cabbage is apparently a thing in cuisine in the UK, if Great British Menu is anything to go by. Typically grilled on an actual fire, at least in most of the episodes I've seen.
      - ggm 4y ago
        I am just back from a trip to Yokohama and was served steamed cabbage heart which had been put into a wooden steamer and cooked over a charcoal fire. It was both steamy-soft, and smokey and delicious to offset the yakitori. I think cabbage is a universal in climates with a real winter: its hardy, it grows into the colder months if you let it, its viable for pickling and salting, and flatulance aside is great nourishment. Shame that kids hate it, but eh, the ones which survive fatten up fast on it, so there's protein latent in cabbage if you need it. Cabbage in school meals in the 60s was indeed served in an ice-cream scoop puddle next to the mince and tatties (or haggis, being scotland)
adrianmonk 4y ago
Huh, so that's the etymology of "hotbed" as in "hotbed of activity"!? TIL. https://www.etymonline.com/word/hotbed https://www.etymonline.com/word/hotbed
- xattt 4y ago
  Yes! It’s all horseshit!
aliasxneo 4y ago
Isn't the excess nitrogen going into the soil an unwelcome change?
throwaway892238 4y ago
According to University of Wisconsin: Fresh manure should not be used on fruits and veg beds, especially where the crops are embedded in soil, because it can transmit human pathogens. It needs to be fully composted manure - that's manure that's been processed for 3 to 4 months. (https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/using-manure-in-the-home-garden/ https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/using-manure-in-the...) In order to supplement the nutrient content of fully composted manure, you can age and then dilute human urine (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080500.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080500.h...) assuming you aren't sick or on medications (https://morningchores.com/urine-as-fertilizer/ https://morningchores.com/urine-as-fertilizer/).
- wjnc 4y ago
  The difference seems to be application “on” versus application “under”. In the hotbed there is a layer of soil on top of the manure, not manure on the plants.
- euroderf 4y ago
  A note to be careful with chicken poop. It is VERY high in nitrogen and can "burn" your plants.
Scoundreller 4y ago
I see this as not great from an environment point of view: the anaerobes in the unturned manure will go, well, anaerobic and generate a lot of methane.
- thomasjb 4y ago
  I wonder how much methane you could capture from a domestic-sized greenhouse, fertalised with manure? I'm really not sure what paths there are for manure which don't release methane and other emissions, at least here the effect is useful
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    > what paths there are for manure which don't release methane Aerobic digestion. Ie: with lots of airflow/oxygen (lots of heat also helps!)
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  That will happen whether you do this or not.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Not in aerobic digestion. Then you get much less greenhouse-gassy CO2 (with the side benefit of being great for immediately nearby plants).
kleton 4y ago
Be careful what manure you bring to your garden. Sometimes, hay is from fields sprayed with grazon, which is persistent in manure. It will kill any dicots you grow in that manure.
fy20 4y ago
> Later on in winter, with less time to wait till the return of spring, you could get away with a stack 30-60cm (1-2ft) in height. One thing I hate about gardening articles and videos is they often use terms that are not consistent with different locations. Where I am in Northern Europe, what we consider 'spring' is going to be very different from what someone in Southern California considers 'spring'. 100 years ago where you audience is going to be in a small location near your printing press this may have been acceptable, but today when your audience is global it really is not.
- asteroidz 4y ago
  Personally, in my locale March is usually when the crocuses start peeking out and the robins return... first signs of spring. But just 100 miles east the landscape might still be a winter wonderland well into April. If I had to hazard a guess, this article was probably written with a British audience in mind, where "spring" loosely corresponds with March through May.
  - 7952 4y ago
    For planting people develop more nuance than just a binary season change. They look at the condition of soil, temperature, likely weather looking forward etc. Right now it is spring where I live. The soil is a bit wet and clumpy. We may still get a frost but probably won't. And in the natural world things can be really spread out. Plants have different niches based on being early or late. Shoots will come up in the winter. And some plants will be dormant until much later.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  So no one should write anything without accounting for everything? I wonder what better term you think there is where spring is used? Like in context it obviously means the start of the growing season. The suggestion is thus that the technique would be used that way before the start of the local growing season. Here we get several feet of snow and frost into May, so it might be something I would do now. It probably wouldn't work good in February when there's piles of snow and temperatures well below freezing.
gadders 4y ago
In terms of whether the bed is warm enough to plant out in, the advice frequently given by Christine Walkden [1] on Gardeners Question Time [2] on how to judge whether it is warm enough is to sit on the soil with your bare bottom. [1] http://www.christinewalkden.com/ http://www.christinewalkden.com/ [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f
KaiserPro 4y ago
Hotbed are grand, but the article is a bit scimpy on important details You will need a layer of something over the raw manure to make sure it doesn't scold/burn/kill your seedlings. Its not just the heat that will kill, but the raw piss. You will have difficulty putting seedlings in raw manure. https://plantura.garden/uk/garden-design/hotbed https://plantura.garden/uk/garden-design/hotbed this has better pictures. You will still need to think about thermal management. The victorians used to have hotbed out the front of green houses. They were made of brick, angled at about 120 degrees. They had a bed for the manure, that ran around the outside and took up ~50% of the space, and a bed inside that was just soil. This allowed them to change the manure to keep the temperature even.
- Liquix 4y ago
  ... add a 15cm (6in) layer of potting mix into the cold frame to begin warming up – you will be sowing or planting into this, not the manure. Is another layer between the soil and manure required?
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    depends on the plant. If its something that sends down long roots, you will need a barrier. For something like beans, you would traditionally dig a deep trench (as in 4foot) and put a layer of manure, with news paper on top, by the time the roots got that far it would be rotten enough. It might be better to use coffee grounds or fine wood chippings, as they are equally as warm but less toxic in the raw state.
jfranche 4y ago
Now we know where the phrase, “Grandma, this salad tastes like $hit” comes from.

115 points by teleforce 4y ago

> From the Roman Emperor Tiberius to the Victorian gardeners of a few generations ago, hotbeds are nothing new. I had no idea Tiberius was a farmer.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
Most people were through most of history. When subsistence farming was the primary way of life, it makes sense that kings and emperors were administrators of, and involved in, farming - Or as we'd call them today "Farmers" as opposed to "Farmhands". It is from this that we get Bread and Circuses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae
- dmreedy 4y ago
  While this is all true (and I think the parent is mostly a joke...), my understanding is that the Roman aristocracy that Tiberius was born into considered themselves Farmers in the same way that the modern American politician identifies with the Small Business Owner (or indeed, if you go far enough back, the Yeoman Farmer). It was more a moral/identity narrative than a thing they actually did. They certainly owned the villas but whether they engaged in any way with the actual work (even in the capacity of "boss") of such places... maybe their servants, or their wives...
  - ggm 4y ago
    Surely Cato the Elder's writing on the economic exploitation of slaves points to a degree of detail in the disposition of cost/benefit against their production? Other fictional writing I read suggests engagement in "trade" was beneath the senatorial classes, and so acquisition of land and it's economic exploitation underwrote what was considered "acceptable" sources of revenue. Oddly, not entirely unlike the British Landed classes. They didn't like to admit that their land holdings had coal mines, where sheep gently grazing was acceptable.
    - dmreedy 4y ago
      > Surely Cato the Elder's writing Cato was, incidentally, a novus homo, not born into a Patrician family. His father was a pleb and a soldier and a farmer, and he was as well. > Other fictional writing I read suggests engagement in "trade" was beneath the senatorial classes [...] Oddly, not entirely unlike the British Landed classes Yeah, the vibe I get was that this was a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Yeah, the vibe I get was that this was a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies. Yes, commerce and labor are both taboo for elites in most premodern societies. There are some obvious exceptions; the Phoenicians wouldn't have seen anything wrong with engaging in commerce.
        inawarminister 4y ago
        Yeah, many trading cultures never had this injunction: for example Malay sultans rise and fall with the prosperity of their entrepots, exporting spices and rice and importing chinaware and Indian riches. * On the other hand... Confucianism puts merchants as one of the lower members of society, because they do not add value as artisans. Edo Japan famously had caste of samurai on the top, farmers on the middle, and merchants on the lowest.
      - scns 4y ago
        > a feature of most? pre-capitalist societies My prejudice would be that new money (by trade) is still looked down upon by old money (inherited/landowners/dynasties). By those with low self-esteem.
        dmreedy 4y ago
        > By those with low self-esteem Exactly the prejudice such old money would (and to your point, still does) hold against "merchants".
- Eric_WVGG 4y ago
  I had no idea Tiberius was a farmhand.
sweettea 4y ago
Diocletian retired from emperoring to his pride and joy, growing cabbages, and refused folks' urgings to take the throne again.
- hammock 4y ago
  Inspired Gladiator perhaps
  - ramses0 4y ago
    (did you ever watch Failsafe, by the way?)
    - hammock 4y ago
      Yes. It was awesome. Thanks for the reco
  - gattilorenz 4y ago
    And the very fun play “Romulus der Große” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, probably. With hens instead of cabbages.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Not my Cabbages! Perhaps he was an inspiration to the Avatars cabbage guy.
blacksqr 4y ago
He did a lot of plowing.
southernplaces7 4y ago
Many Roman emperors moonlighted into other interests during their lives. emperor Domitian, son of the emperor Vespasian, for example, wrote what is considered to be one of the world's first known books on hair care for balding men, as a balding man himself who was quite sensitive about his look. Also, it was a largely agrarian society, so even an emperor could have had a few turns at managing fields at some point in their life. When Diocletian, the first of the "Dominate" era emperors, voluntarily left power (the only emperor ever to do so), he returned to his palatial fortress on the Croatian coast to pursue gardening and especially cabbage farming. At one point after his retirement, a group of senators from Rome was dispatched to visit him and convince him to go back into the purple due to the collapse of the tetrarchic system he'd set up for Imperial administration. While the senators argued with him, Diocletian famously brought them to his garden and pulled out one of his own cabbages. He then asked the senators how they could expect him to possibly come back to the stresses of Rome when he had managed to raise such beautiful cabbages in the peace of his new home.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  Also, there was no Netflix back then, and, like, four books to read. What else were you going to do?
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    Conquer and pillage?
  - southernplaces7 4y ago
    Joke aside, to wealthy and powerful Romans of the time, many thousands, maybe tens of thousands of books and tracts would have been available, possibly even to middle class people. There were even publishing industries and trends akin to reduced versions of today's best seller phenomenon. Someone like Diocletian, Vespasian or his son Domitian wouldn't have had much trouble with interesting literature.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
devnullbrain 4y ago
The awkward phrasing is SEO spam.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

> Take your pick from a multitude of cold-season vegetables – beets, carrots, lettuce and other salad leaves, onions, spinach, chard, radishes and turnips – and sow knowing that you’ll be picking and plucking within weeks. Lettuce is one of those vegetables, that once it gets contaminated with bacteria, you are kind of screwed. You can really wash it off and lettuce is usually eaten raw. Having it grown in a pile of manure may make it harder to keep from being contaminated.

chongli 4y ago
You can totally cook lettuce and eat it. It's healthy and tastes just fine. A quick blanch in boiling water is all it takes.
- ggm 4y ago
  Cos or Romaine hearts cut into quarters and whacked on a grill for some charring is pretty good too. "Horta" is any green leaves you like, blanched and served with oil and lemon. Sure, it tends to be Dandelion or Rocket or whatever, but I don't think it's specified by the greek ya-yas, its whatever is to hand.
  - bradknowles 4y ago
    Grilled Hispy (?) Cabbage is apparently a thing in cuisine in the UK, if Great British Menu is anything to go by. Typically grilled on an actual fire, at least in most of the episodes I've seen.
    - ggm 4y ago
      I am just back from a trip to Yokohama and was served steamed cabbage heart which had been put into a wooden steamer and cooked over a charcoal fire. It was both steamy-soft, and smokey and delicious to offset the yakitori. I think cabbage is a universal in climates with a real winter: its hardy, it grows into the colder months if you let it, its viable for pickling and salting, and flatulance aside is great nourishment. Shame that kids hate it, but eh, the ones which survive fatten up fast on it, so there's protein latent in cabbage if you need it. Cabbage in school meals in the 60s was indeed served in an ice-cream scoop puddle next to the mince and tatties (or haggis, being scotland)

adrianmonk 4y ago

Huh, so that's the etymology of "hotbed" as in "hotbed of activity"!? TIL. https://www.etymonline.com/word/hotbed https://www.etymonline.com/word/hotbed

xattt 4y ago
Yes! It’s all horseshit!

aliasxneo 4y ago

Isn't the excess nitrogen going into the soil an unwelcome change?

throwaway892238 4y ago

According to University of Wisconsin: Fresh manure should not be used on fruits and veg beds, especially where the crops are embedded in soil, because it can transmit human pathogens. It needs to be fully composted manure - that's manure that's been processed for 3 to 4 months. (https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/using-manure-in-the-home-garden/ https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/using-manure-in-the...) In order to supplement the nutrient content of fully composted manure, you can age and then dilute human urine (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080500.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200122080500.h...) assuming you aren't sick or on medications (https://morningchores.com/urine-as-fertilizer/ https://morningchores.com/urine-as-fertilizer/).

wjnc 4y ago
The difference seems to be application “on” versus application “under”. In the hotbed there is a layer of soil on top of the manure, not manure on the plants.
euroderf 4y ago
A note to be careful with chicken poop. It is VERY high in nitrogen and can "burn" your plants.

Scoundreller 4y ago

I see this as not great from an environment point of view: the anaerobes in the unturned manure will go, well, anaerobic and generate a lot of methane.

thomasjb 4y ago
I wonder how much methane you could capture from a domestic-sized greenhouse, fertalised with manure? I'm really not sure what paths there are for manure which don't release methane and other emissions, at least here the effect is useful
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > what paths there are for manure which don't release methane Aerobic digestion. Ie: with lots of airflow/oxygen (lots of heat also helps!)
HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
That will happen whether you do this or not.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Not in aerobic digestion. Then you get much less greenhouse-gassy CO2 (with the side benefit of being great for immediately nearby plants).

kleton 4y ago

Be careful what manure you bring to your garden. Sometimes, hay is from fields sprayed with grazon, which is persistent in manure. It will kill any dicots you grow in that manure.

fy20 4y ago

> Later on in winter, with less time to wait till the return of spring, you could get away with a stack 30-60cm (1-2ft) in height. One thing I hate about gardening articles and videos is they often use terms that are not consistent with different locations. Where I am in Northern Europe, what we consider 'spring' is going to be very different from what someone in Southern California considers 'spring'. 100 years ago where you audience is going to be in a small location near your printing press this may have been acceptable, but today when your audience is global it really is not.

asteroidz 4y ago
Personally, in my locale March is usually when the crocuses start peeking out and the robins return... first signs of spring. But just 100 miles east the landscape might still be a winter wonderland well into April. If I had to hazard a guess, this article was probably written with a British audience in mind, where "spring" loosely corresponds with March through May.
- 7952 4y ago
  For planting people develop more nuance than just a binary season change. They look at the condition of soil, temperature, likely weather looking forward etc. Right now it is spring where I live. The soil is a bit wet and clumpy. We may still get a frost but probably won't. And in the natural world things can be really spread out. Plants have different niches based on being early or late. Shoots will come up in the winter. And some plants will be dormant until much later.
maxerickson 4y ago
So no one should write anything without accounting for everything? I wonder what better term you think there is where spring is used? Like in context it obviously means the start of the growing season. The suggestion is thus that the technique would be used that way before the start of the local growing season. Here we get several feet of snow and frost into May, so it might be something I would do now. It probably wouldn't work good in February when there's piles of snow and temperatures well below freezing.

gadders 4y ago

In terms of whether the bed is warm enough to plant out in, the advice frequently given by Christine Walkden [1] on Gardeners Question Time [2] on how to judge whether it is warm enough is to sit on the soil with your bare bottom. [1] http://www.christinewalkden.com/ http://www.christinewalkden.com/ [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f

KaiserPro 4y ago

Hotbed are grand, but the article is a bit scimpy on important details You will need a layer of something over the raw manure to make sure it doesn't scold/burn/kill your seedlings. Its not just the heat that will kill, but the raw piss. You will have difficulty putting seedlings in raw manure. https://plantura.garden/uk/garden-design/hotbed https://plantura.garden/uk/garden-design/hotbed this has better pictures. You will still need to think about thermal management. The victorians used to have hotbed out the front of green houses. They were made of brick, angled at about 120 degrees. They had a bed for the manure, that ran around the outside and took up ~50% of the space, and a bed inside that was just soil. This allowed them to change the manure to keep the temperature even.

Liquix 4y ago
... add a 15cm (6in) layer of potting mix into the cold frame to begin warming up – you will be sowing or planting into this, not the manure. Is another layer between the soil and manure required?
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  depends on the plant. If its something that sends down long roots, you will need a barrier. For something like beans, you would traditionally dig a deep trench (as in 4foot) and put a layer of manure, with news paper on top, by the time the roots got that far it would be rotten enough. It might be better to use coffee grounds or fine wood chippings, as they are equally as warm but less toxic in the raw state.

jfranche 4y ago

Now we know where the phrase, “Grandma, this salad tastes like $hit” comes from.