Electricity, tireless choreboy of a modern world, has been given another job. It is being used as a soil warmer for growing plants.
“If you had asked me a half dozen years ago what I thought of the prospects for electric hotbeds,” says George W. Kable, director of the National Rural Electric Project, in the current issue of The Country Gentleman, “I probably would have said that the idea was interesting theoretically but without any great practical value. I would have told you that it was a little presumptuous to expect electricity of compete with manure in heating a hotbed.”
But today, Mr. Kable goes on to explain, electric hotbeds are being used with splendid results by nurserymen and truck farmers throughout the country. Electricity is proving itself a better warming agent than manure and usually is more economical.
The most popular and adaptable warming equipment is a small, flexible, lead-covered cable. The nurseryman simply removes the topsoil and lays the heat-radiating cable in place, doubling it back and forth across the bed with the strands six or seven inches apart. The soil is then replaced and the hotbed is ready for use. Sometimes a thermostat is installed at the edge of the bed for automatic temperature control.
Since the electrical warming of hotbeds has proved so successful, the principle is rapidly being extended to other branches of plant culture.
The proximity of most nurseries to urban centers and the ease with which electric current may be obtained from power lines, coupled with the decline in rates, assure a spectacular development in this field, The Country Gentleman writer believes. The magic of electricity is beginning to serve agriculture in earnest.
From the editorial page of The Ruralite, Sylva, N.C., March 22, 1932, Mrs. E.E. Brown, publisher. To see a photo of heating coils in an electric hotbed, go to:
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068754/1932-03-22/ed-1/seq-4/
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