now is also a good time for garlic!

I don't know about specifics, but think big, the bigger the pile, the more heat it will generate. Yesterday morning I drove past a steaming pile of wood chips dumped for landscaping at a new home site and that's what you need, a huge steaming pile. The bigger and steamier the better. Dumptruck bed size. Probably need to add lots of fall leaves unless it's horse manure. Seems like if it's a large hoop house I'd put a heaping row down each side, but unless you have enough to keep the mounds really thick, then go for a single heap so that it can build up heat. When I saw it done in a hoop house they were using truckloads of leaves from the town, so volume is everything if you want the microbes in the middle to be insulated, stay alive and generate heat. Of course, less is less work and less heat. If cows or sheep are bedded in stalls and you just keep throwing down straw, by the time you have six inches or so of compacted straw and manure underneath another couple inches of loose straw for insulation, it's warming up a little.

How cool to have a coldframe! Sound's like a fun project!

I find it easier to get good lettuce and spinach yields when planting them in pots. I never had much luck planting them in my veggie plot. But my mustard greens, kale, chard, and eggplant are going crazy. The young beets are doing well, and the basil is hanging on there even though it's getting cooler. Snails and slugs are at my bok choi, though :-(