Fire Hot-Beds. — 75 



to anyone contemplating a fire hot-bed, that they carefully 

 calculate the cost of both hot-bed and forcing house, and then do 

 not let a reasonable difference in cost prevent them from choosing 

 to build the forcing house. Very many cheap houses of this 

 character, varying somewhat in construction, according to the 

 taste and means of the owner, are built every year. Their utility 

 has been demonstrated, and their cost is within the means 

 of gardeners who now depend entirely upon hot-beds." 



I have given this detailed description, not to advise the 

 reader to build exactly in the same way, but to make him 

 acquainted with the true principles underlying the construction 

 and management of fire hot-beds and similar structures, general 

 rules which he will be wise to follow pretty closely while the 

 arrangement of minor details can be left to his individual taste 

 and preferences. 



Fire hot-beds in some respects are undoubtedly a great 

 improvement on the old-style manure hot-beds. Yet I believe 

 there is still room for further improvement. Hot-water boiler 

 and pipes may yet play a very important part in the make-up of 

 the hot-bed of the future. As the old flue had to give way to 

 hot water and steam pipes in green-house heating, so will the 

 fire hot-bed have to make room for the hot-bed heated by hot 

 water or steam. Flues will have to go ; but it looks to me that 

 the hot-bed of the future may be a hot house or forcing pit, and 

 not a hot-bed at all. But whether the one or the other, now that 

 we have cheap iron furnaces, some of them self-feeders, for hot 

 water heating, I can see no reason why the flue beds with their 

 dry heat should be used. Hot water gives us an easily-controlled, 

 uniform and altogether unobjectionable heat, and can be used 

 with perfect safety, and for any purpose of forcing and plant- 

 growing with far less attendance than afire hot-bed will demand. 

 The hot-water heating system has the further advantage^that it dis- 

 penses with deep trenches under the beds and with the frame work 

 needed for fire hot-beds, which is so liable to give out in conse- 

 quence of the supports rotting away. The only excavation worthy 

 the name is that for the boiler or furnace, while the pipes can be 

 imbedded one foot below the surface of the hot-bed soil, or other- 

 wise arranged in the same way as will be described for the 

 modern forcing house. 



In some instances the waste steam of factories has recently 

 been utilized for heating hot-beds and pits. Wherever the gar- 

 dener finds opportunities of this kind, he should try to make the 

 most of them. 



