Volume XIX 
Number 3 
March, 1911 
Whether your place is one of several acres, or merely a plot 50x150 feet, you should have a hotbed or a cold- 
frame to gain a month on summer every year and to carry over through the winter tender plants that cannot 
survive exposure 
Hotbeds and Coldframes: What They Are 
and What They Will Do 
by C. Ii. Miller 
Photographs by the author and others 
N O garden is complete without a hotbed. It not only fur¬ 
nishes an outlet for your pent-up energies when the March 
sun feels good on the back of your neck and you long to get out 
and dig in the soil, but by means of hotbeds and coldframes the 
bearing season of your garden may be extended several months. 
You can raise an abundance of flowers from seeds at very little 
cost and with reasonable assurance of having them succeed when 
the warm weather comes and they are set out in the open, and 
the tiresome two months’ wait after the seedman's catalogue 
arrives and before anything can be planted, is reduced to imme¬ 
diate action. By means of a few glass sash, the winter of our 
discontent is made glorious summer. As Kipling says: 
“The cure for this ill is not to sit still 
Or frowst with a book by the fire 
But to take a large hoe and a shovel also 
And dig till you gently perspire.” 
But enough of the poetry of hotbeds: What are the facts? 
With a hotbed you can have garden stufif two months ahead of 
your neighbor who plants in the open. With a coldframe, you can 
beat him by one month. Think of sweet corn by June 30th, and 
cosmos that really blooms before the frost nips it. 
It is always a problem for the amateur gardener to know when 
to plant his seeds. A safer rule than any arbitrary calendar date 
is this: When the peach and plum trees blossom, the average 
temperature is 45 degrees in the shade, and the seeds that will 
germinate at this temperature are beets, carrots, cabbage, cauli¬ 
flower, lettuce, parsley, onions, radishes and spinach. You must 
however, wait for the apple trees to blossom, showing that the 
average temperature is 60 degrees in the shade, before you can 
be sure that corn, melons, egg-plants, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers 
and peppers will sprout. 
For these more tender things the hotbed is used.. By starting 
(150 
