HOTBEDS 87 



in a deep frame in late March, and covered with a layer of soil will 

 make an excellent hotbed. While they will not heat up to as high a 

 temperature as fresh horse manure, the heat will stay in them longer. 

 Another good way is to use part leaves and part manure. 



Aside from the usefulness of a hotbed, one should take into 

 consideration the fact that even though you have to pay a high price 

 for manure, every bit of it will come in handy after you are through 

 with the hotbed. You can mix it with your potting soil, or that 

 which, you are going to use for the filling of benches. However, 

 this, of course, is only a second consideration, the most important 

 being the fact that a hotbed will give you reUef in early Spring 

 when every inch of bench space is taken up and when stock is in 

 need of a shift and more room. There are a lot of different soft- 

 wooded plants that cannot be placed in a coldframe, hilt which in a 

 hotbed, or one with just a little bottom heat, will do as well as on 

 benches in a greenhouse, or better. This is the case with Goleus, 

 Alternantheras and tuberous-rooted Begonias. In a frame you 

 have a chance to harden the plants off a bit before you plant them 

 out. Always plunge the pots half way, or better still up to their 

 rims, into the soil as it helps retain the moisture in them. When you 

 remove the plants later on, give each pot a twist a quarter way 

 around, and it will come out clean, while if it is lifted out straight, 

 some of the wet soil is apt to cHng to it. 



COLDFRAMES 



Build all the best and most modem greenhouses you can afford; they 

 will help you produce good stock and save you money. But don't, on 

 that account, overlook the great importance of coldframes. Every foot 

 outdoors covered with coldframes is fully as valuable— especially to 

 the retail grower— as bench space inside; in fact there are times when 

 you can use the coldframes to even better advantage. 



'T'HE more it costs to erect a greenhouse, the more valuable cold- 

 frames are, for it would be wrong to make use of bench room 

 in a coldhouse when the plants could be just as well off in a coldframe 

 leaving the bench to be used for another crop which couldn't be 

 handled in a frame. 



With an apparently constant increase in the overhead expense 

 of running a greenhouse, and the ever-increasing price of erecting a 

 modern structure, it becomes more and more necessary to plan on 

 getting the utmost out of an establishment. You can no longer 

 afford, for instance, to overwinter a lot of Chrysanthemums in flats 

 on a bench in a cool house, when they are just as well off — in fact, 

 better off— in a coldframe; you might better be devoting the bench 

 space to something which would bring in money at the same^Wme. 



