Jack First's hotbed course

[Noosner]

I attended a hotbed day yesterday, run by Jack First (of Gardeners' World fame) at his Keighley allotments.

It was AMAZING. He explained how the land capability in Keighley (and also in Ilkley, where I live) is low, at 4 on a scale of 1-5 (where 5 is low) and how building hotbeds improves our growing conditions up here astronomically. It effectively adds another season. He is sowing things like lettuce, spinach and carrots at the end of January and getting his first crops in late March.

He has written a book on the subject which I totally recommend. If you have ever thought of going on one of his courses, do it soon as he is retiring at the end of next year.

Have any Grapes ever tried making a hotbed and how did you get on?

[alldigging]

BBC Two - Gardeners' World, 2012, Episode 7, How to build a hotbed

Watch it here!

[noviceveggrower]

Where's his allotment Noosner? I use to live in Keighley and then moved to Bingley. Have read a bit on hotbeds and would need to have one down allotment. Seem to be running out of room down there at the moment though as I'm trying to wangle a greenhouse this year.

[alldigging]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrIldkX7nHc

Marley Allotment in Keighley,

[Kirk]

My question would be why use a scale of 1-5 and have 1 as the high end?
Suppose it is Yorkshire.

[Noosner]

Hi NVG and alldigging, yes that's it exactly, Marley allotments. Didn't know you'd lived in this neck of the woods, NVG! What took you away? Y'know, a bloke came all the way up from Kent to attend the course yesterday. Jack told us a bit about the Gardeners World film and how interested people were in what he has been doing at Marley. Thanks for putting the link up, alldigging, I shall watch it again now!

[Noosner]

My question would be why use a scale of 1-5 and have 1 as the high end?
Suppose it is Yorkshire.

LOL! That's the scale used in agriculture in general though, not just by us cranky Northerners.

[Penellype]

Funnily enough I have just started a hotbed this morning. Having 2 horses I have a constant supply of fresh manure at my friend's house, and I made a hotbed for the first time last year. We use wood shavings for our bedding, which is not the best, but the temperature of the bed (2ft by 4ft by about 18 inches high) held at a reasonable 10 degrees when it was around zero at night, and I managed to grow early french beans and courgettes from seed in it, planted towards the end of April. The first beans were ready by the end of June and the courgettes produced their first fruit in mid July, about a week before a plant of the same variety sown indoors at the same time and planted out into a container at the beginning of June.

I also tried growing tomatoes and peppers in it, but this was less successful, presumably because the plants grew too tall too fast and the tops lost the benefit of the warm soil.

[noviceveggrower]

Of course Marley. Was racking my brain to try and remember where all the allotments were in the Keighley area.
My dad is originally from Shipley and he met my mom in the army. We have moved about quite a bit, think its the army in them, over the years. We spent several years in Scotland with my mom and dad doing their version of The Good Life.
OH is from Pudsey and I use to work in Greggs in Ilkley years ago. Small world Noosner.

[Kristen]

Beechgrove made a hot bed last season. They had a non-hot bed along side it (both covered with polythene IIRC) and there was a huge difference in temperature

[Noosner]

Hope your hotbed is a big success, Penellype. Keep me posted.

Kristen, that's interesting. On the course, Jack First put a plastic bottle of cold water in a hotbed and in a couple of hours it had heated up to the temperature of hot water coming out of the tap.

Thanks for the bio, NVG. It's possible you might have served Mr Noosner with a few Greggs cheese and onion pasties in his time as he's always nipping off down there!

[sparrow100]

I've been thinking about doing this for a while. It sounds really interesting and would be great to have early harvests...We have a steady supply of fresh manure on site so it's just the structure around it...

[Kristen]

BBC site has a clip (currently!) from the Beechgrove Hotbed episode:

BBC Two - Beechgrove Garden, 2014, Episode 4, Hot beds

At depth it was 45C !!

[alldigging]

I've seen articles about people who make hot water by running a hose through a muck pile!

Here's a smaller version!
Free Hot Water from Compost Wheelie Bin - The Permaculture Research Institute

[Penellype]

My hotbed was made using the method in this video How to make a hotbed | Learn How To Garden, which is very easy. I used some old decking planks for the sides. The biggest problem last year was what to cover it with once the plants grew taller than the height of the top layer - I'd covered it with a piece of polycarbonate upto that point. If I remember correctly it wasn't too much of an issue because of the warm weather last spring.