An update on my 8′ sq hot bed with lemon tree. opened up it up today to have a look, the leaves are a very happy healthy looking dark green, it’s got some flowers on it, it looks amazing. The hot bed has shrunk loads. I gave it 3 gallons of water in celebration. I think I winged it, as the hot bed has not really hat to work that hard & I should have needed to top it up, but with our ‘kind’ winter not so much heat has been necessary, so have been fortunate. The weeds have only just started growing & were pretty easy to pull up & compost insitu! The best bit is i have saved a small fortune this winter, in electricity bills & have a much healthier looking lemon tree.
Definitely going to build more hot beds later this year, for next year, of different shapes & sizes.
Putting a doubled layered plastic layer roof on has been a great help lately as the heat built up has been tremendous, there is ventilation on sides & chimney on top of pyramid so natural convection, which by all account the tree has enjoyed too.