hem on the manure short pieces of board should be
laid under the corners to prevent their settling in the manure unevenly.
I prefer to sow the seed in flats or shallow boxes filled with rich but
sandy and very friable soil, and set these on a layer of sifted coal
ashes covering the manure and made perfectly level, but many growers sow
on soil resting directly on the manure; if this is done the soil should
be light and friable and made perfectly level. A perspective view of a
three-sash hotbed is given in Fig. 13, and of a cross-section in Fig.
14.

[Illustration: FIG. 13--THREE-SASH HOTBED]

In some sections, particularly in the South, it is not always easy to
procure suitable manure for making hotbeds, so these are built to be
warmed by flues under ground, but I think it much better where a fire is
to be used that the sash be built into the form of a house. A hotbed of
manure is preferred to a house by some because of its supplying uniform
and moist bottom heat--and one can easily give abundant air; but the
sash can be built into the form of a house at but little more expense,
and it has the great advantage of enabling one to work among the plants
in any weather, while, if properly built, any desired degree of heat and
ventilation can be easily secured. Except when very early ripening fruit
is the desideratum, plants started with heat but pricked out and grown
in cold-frames without it, but where they can be protected during cold
nights and storms, will give better results than those grown to full
size for the field in artificial heat.

[Illustration: FIG. 14--CROSS-SECTION OF HOTBED]

[Illustration: FIG. 15--COLD-FRAMES ON HILL-SIDE]

=Cold-frames.=--In locations where tomatoes are much grown large areas
are devoted to cold-frames covered either by sash or cloth curtains.
Sash give much better protection from cold and on this account are more
desirable, particularly where very early fruiting is wanted, but their
first cost is much greater and the labor of attending to beds covered by
them is much more than where cloth is used. Sash-covered beds should be
of single width and run east and west, but if the beds are covered with
cloth it is better that they be double width (12 feet) and run north and
south. The front of the single and the sides of the double width beds
should be 8 to 10 inches high, held firmly erect by stakes and perfectly
parallel, both horizontally and vertically, with the back or with the
central