My New Hotbed

[ducks4you]

I imagine that they would, BUT I budget my bedding costs and it isn't worth wasting straw $ on this, OR hay. I use straw in my stalls and my shelter. In Fact, next winter, if this experiment works, I will line the 16' x 19' (minus the hay manger) shelter with straw to use for a proper hotbed, which will be located on the south side of my 4 car garage (1-1/2 car lengths deep) wall. Once in awhile you can find rained on hay really cheap. Cattle can eat it, horses won't touch it, but it isn't haying season here until May. Buying hay and straw out of season is pricey, Straw can be $3.00/bale in season and maybe $10.00/bale OUT of season. We horse people are putting hay/straw in the barn on sweltery summer days, when we would rather be riding!
I think I could use some wood to make a frame, though. I bought eight 1/4 wood to help the holes in my barn roof, but I had the barn reroofed 2-1/2 years ago, so they are now stored under my hay, purposeless. Good idea! Thanks!!
I Shudder when people use beautiful straw to keep their lawns up, or on construction projects, when we horse people have to sometimes hunt for it for bedding. IMHO, straw is the BEST to put in the stalls where your horses sleep--yes, Virginia, they Do deep sleep some 15 minutes at a time, going down in "Nativity position" first, then flat and snoring, then up 1/2 halfway again, then standing. I can see the evidence on bedding on their sides every morning that I feed them or turnout.

 

[baymule]

We can't find straw here. We use pine shavings-at least we got lotsa pine trees! I have a 28 year old cremello gelding. I found him laid out flat in the woods one day and thought he was dead. I ran to him and he raised his head halfway up like he was saying "WHAT???" I was so relieved, I plopped down in the dirt and told him how much I loved him.

 

[seedcorn]

So what you are saying is you ruined his nap?

 

[ducks4you]

EVERYBODY has that experience! Horses need to rest their legs so they go down like your pretty boy did, then, if they think it's safe they go prone and go into deep sleep for about 15 minutes at a time, then up again, like in your picture, then standing. You could SWEAR from a distance that you have a dead horse!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ducks, I can have some pretty serious straight line winds here too. Right after I moved here I lost four out of five sections of 12' x 12' roof off of a 12' x 60' loafing shed. Three of those sections were in front of that shed the next morning but the fourth flew about 250 feet, hit the ground and took a hard right turn right behind my cars and wound up in my front yard on the opposite side of the shed. it was easy to see where it hit the ground and bounced behind the cars. If it had hot about 10' earlier I'd have been replacing cars, let alone what it could have done to the house. That's where I got the lumber and tin to cover my main chicken run.

That wasn't my only good luck. I'd just received my first chicks in the mail the day before and had them in a brooder in the coop I'd built in the end of that shed. That's the only section of roof that stayed one, probably because I'd built the wall for the coop and strengthened it. But even more remarkable, the electricity to my heat lamp stayed on. Those chicks made it fine. I'd routed the wiring along the wall instead of under the roof where it would have been ripped off. When they built that shed roof they used short smooth nails to attach the roof. When I rebuilt it, I used longer ribbed nails.

My gardening problem with wind here is not those straight line winds but from now until June I'll have pretty steady winds out of the south. Those can dry out anything I transplant. I planted a row of lilacs on part of the south side of the garden to try to make a wind break. It took them a lot longer to grow into a hedge than I thought it should take, but they are finally getting there. They are far enough away that they don't shade the garden but they do help some. When I transplant stuff I often build a wall of dirt on the south side to hide the plants from the wind until they get started. I plant in rows instead of beds. When the plants get started, I level that mound into the middle of the rows.

There is a learning curve with anything we do. A lot of these techniques sound simple but there are always details. By the end of this season you'll be our expert on this.

 

[ducks4you]

AMEN on the learning curve.

 

[baymule]

So what you are saying is you ruined his nap?

Yeah, he's 28 years old, the love of my life, and he shouldn't SCARE me like that!

 

[ducks4you]

Yesterday I stayed home in the morning and worked on my bed. OK, ...so the manure mix didn't feel warm, but it didn't feel cold either. This is what it looked like after one week:

I went to my outbuilding to retrieve the garden dirt, which I had been saving in these containers:

I mixed it with stall leavings that had composted for a year, just to make sure that it was loose and friable, and it ended up looking like this:

I direct seeded radishes, hence the piece of wood divider. I had intended to interplant carrots WITH the radishes, BUT we had 50 mph gusts, and you know how carrot seeds would just blow away, so I'll add the carrots maybe this weekend.
NOTE: I watered the entire bed. I have learned that if you only water in the bed where the seeds are that the dry soil will soak up the moisture from the wet soil.
DD's bought me this Rubbermaid Garden shed (Mother's Day Present, 2016) to replace the rotting wood box that had lived and was dying behind the tool shed:

They even tore down the old one to burn! VERY thoughtful.
I had bought a plastic shelving unit and finally cleaned up the shed with it last weekend. It was too tall for 4 tier, so the 4th tier became a bench. It really is organized now, and it doesn't rust or rot.
I also raked up 5 large leaf bags from my DD's back yard--their town is a forest of these old trees and other people complain that it is too smokey from leaf burning every Fall, which it is. I put them out for my birds and I could use another 1/2 dozen bags to line the rest of the run with bedding.

 

[thistlebloom]

That soil in your hotbed looks great.

Now you know what to do with all those leaves next year!
I bag leaves from clients trees and stockpile them. The girls love it when I dump a fresh bag in their snowy run in the winter. It also keeps the footing cleaner and breaks down quickly with spring rains and all that scratching.
In the fall I dig out the top 4" or so and spread it all over next years garden spots and my perennial beds.

 

[ducks4you]

I like the idea of NOT putting out extra seeds to come up next year, too. Don't know why I never thought to do this, but that's what our Forum Friends are for, right?