Hotbed Season

While it is indeed spring here in Nelson, it still snows sometimes (as it did this morning – white-out conditions even!). So I can't just plop my tomato seedlings straight into the ground just yet. That's where my trusty hotbed comes in. If you have been following my blog, you'll remember that I built a hotbed last year. I've since moved to another part of town, but with the help of our dependable community same-day courier, I managed to get it to my new place in one piece.

(It's a beast of a thing, though. In the process of moving it, I discovered that hardwood pallets can become extremely unwieldy after absorbing rainwater for a year.)

This year I'm setting up the hotbed on the south-facing side of our garage. There's a little sheltered corridor there that will provide great wind protection and hopefully a warmer microclimate.

Last year I used a combination of coffee grounds from the local café (the nitrogen component) and sawdust from Christoph's yard (the carbon component). This year I found I was short of the carbon component for the compost – but fortunately enough, one of my landowners lent me the use of her electric wood-chipper for a week, and I've been using it to pulp a rotted tree stump that Laire and I dug up in our front yard. The chipper produces really nice, fluffy mulch! We're hoping to be able to use it to make garden mulch from tree branches as well. Pictures follow.