348 Glass 



quickly and so violently that it has to be wet to prevent 

 it from burning, although the admixture of stravr or 

 litter with the manure will remedy the trouble. Each 

 case is a law unto itself. 



Making the manure bed. 



Hotbed frames are sometimes set on top of the. pile of 

 fermenting manure, as shown in Fig. 215. The manure 

 should extend some distance beyond the edges of the 



frame; otherwise the 

 frame will become too cold 

 about the outside, and the 

 plants will suffer. It is 

 preferable to have a pit 

 beneath the frame in 

 216. Hotbed with m^n^e on top ^hich the m a n u T 6 is 

 the ground. placed. The pit should be 



a foot wider on either side than the width of the frame, 

 and should be about two feet deep. Fig. 316 is a cross- 

 section of a standard pit hotbed (H. Ness, Circ. 3, n. s., 

 Tex. Exp. Sta.), showing the position and proportion of 

 the manure. On the ground under a bed an inch or two of 

 any coarse material is laid to keep the manure from the 

 cold earth. On this, twelve to thirty inches of manure are 

 placed. Above the manure is a thin layer of leaf-mold or 

 some porous material, that will serve as a distributor of the 

 heat, and above this are four or five inches of soft garden 

 loam, in which the plants are to be grown. 



It is advisable to place the manure in the pit in layers, 

 each stratum to be packed or settled down before another 

 one is put in. These layers should be four to eight inches 



