HOTBEDS AND COLDFRAMES 55 



to the ■window sash to catch the rays of the sun. Place the 

 frames in a location protected from north wind, clearly ex^josed 

 to the sun. 



1. Making a Hotbed. — A hotbed can be made with little cost. 

 Let the students do all the work. They will be glad to. They work 

 with more earnestness and zest than they do at some dry inside 

 work. One or two discussions as to how to build a hotbed should be 

 taken up in the class room and some definite plan adopted. Hints 

 can be found in bulletins and farm journals. (See Cornell bulletin 

 on " Hotbed Construction and Management." ) Plants can be . grown 

 at school and then taken home to be placed in the front yard or home 

 garden. Plants grown in a hotbed may be sold to defray the expense 

 of material for making the frames. 



Seedsmen or students' parents will be glad to furnish seed with 

 the understanding that they may get a few dozen plants for use later. 



Special hotbed sash are made with either single glass or 

 double glass. But sash made for ordinary windows may be 

 fastened together in pairs. Place the two parts end to end and 

 then nail a light strip of wood on each side to hold them firmly 

 together. These strips should be as thick as the sash and about 

 one inch wide. Such pairs of window sash may be placed 

 side by side in any numbers desired. Thus the beds will be 

 six feet from north to south side, if six feet is the length of the 

 pair of sash. The length of the bed from east to west may 

 be made to suit any number of sash desired. The persons in 

 charge of the hotbed can work from both north and south sides. 



About twelve inches of fresh horse manure is tramped into 

 a pit of that depth and then the frames are placed over it 

 (Fig. 33). Six inches of good garden soil is placed in the 

 bottom of the frames on top of the manure. The manure and 

 soil will be wanned by the sun when the glass is in place ; or 

 the manure may be started to heating by the addition of warm 

 water. 



Dirt should be banked up outside the frames to prevent 

 the escape of heat during cold weather (Fig. 34). 



How Hotbeds are Warmed. — There are two sources of 



