How To Make A Manure Hotbed For Early Vegetable Garden

In locations with cooler spring climates it is difficult to get your garden planted early enough to allow vegetables enough time to grow, ripen and harvest before the first fall frost. Using a manure hotbed can help you get a jump-start on planting and reward you with a longer growing season.

You can use a manure hotbed under your cold frames or directly on an area in your garden plot. Either way, you need to select a location with a southern exposure to maximize the time your manure hotbed receives sunlight.

The area should have good, natural drainage. Pick an area where rain water will not pool under or around it. If your area has poor drainage you can use a bottom layer of gravel or drainage tile to improve your ground.

Place a 1 foot layer of straw or hay on the ground or your drainage gravel. Next, place a layer of hot, fresh manure (4-6 weeks old) over the straw. The manure layer should be 2 feet deep.

For hotbeds, horse and chicken manure are two of the best types of manure, but you can use manure from other sources as well. You want newer manure as it produces more heat as it decomposes.

Place another layer of hay over the manure; a 6” layer is fine here. Then place your garden soil over your manure hotbed. If growing organically, be sure to mix in some of your compost from last fall with your garden soil. Some people prefer to use potting soil as their garden soil layer and those come in organic and non-organic. Read the bag to be sure you know what you are buying.

You can line the outside border of your manure hotbed to help hold the heat in. Some choices for this are straw/hay bales, bricks, concrete blocks and wood or metal frames. The bales are great for keeping heat in. Metal isn’t the top choice, but use whatever you have without going to too much expense and labor.

If your area is still experiencing frosty nights you should post wooden stakes around the border of your manure hotbed and place a layer of clear plastic over it. This will allow sunlight, but help protect new seedlings from frost. Some people also use a very light layer of mulch (straw or even fine bark) to help hold the heat.

Plant your seeds in the garden soil and you will have nice sized vegetable starts to transplant into your garden when you normally plant your garden. The manure hotbed has just given you a jump-start by allowing you to get your vegetable starts growing early, thus lengthening the growing season. No more green tomatoes!