THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



255 



Walton's Terror, 23 dwts. ; second, 

 Mr. Amson's Alice, 21 dwts. 22 grs.; 

 third, Mr. Walton's Eva; fourth, Mr. 



Wilkinson's Overseer, 19 dwts. 1 gr. ; 

 fifth, Mr. Beckett's Cotton Hall, 

 20 dwts, 12 grs. 



WINTER CULTURE OF THE CUCUMBER. 



I defy any one to grow cucumbers -well in I August, you cannot make sure of fine fruit 

 winter by such make-shift methods as we can at Christmas, with the most perfect manage- 



adopt at other seasons, and my own ex 

 perience with dung-pits and dues, has taught 

 me that, unless the grower has a really effi- 

 cient system of heating, on which he can 

 depend, and with the management of which 

 he is quite familiar, the task is one beset 

 with difficulties and vexations. It was after 

 being fully satisfied that dung-heating for 

 this purpose was a clumsy and uncertain 

 method, that I adopted the hot- water system, 

 which has more than answered my expecta- 

 tions, as I stated last month, in describing 

 the house in which I now grow them. Be- 

 fore I briefly describe my practice, a few 

 words of a general kind may be useful to the 

 reader. The cucumber likes heat, mois- 

 ture, and a rich soil — sunshine it can do 

 without, but it must have fair daylight. 

 They do best with a pretty constant bottom 

 heat of 70 degs., which may be allowed to 

 rise to 80 degs. when the plants are in full 

 vigour. The air heat should average 75 

 degs. ; it may rise to 85 degs. on a sunshiny 

 day, and never sink below 65 degs. on the 

 coldest night. The water given should be 

 quite warm, not less than 70 degs., and one 

 great cause of failure with inexperienced 

 hands, is chilling the roots, by giving the 

 water too cold. It is best to use the ther- 

 mometer again and again, until such ex- 

 perience is acquired as to remove the prac- 

 tice out of the region of guess work. 



For the winter crop, I prefer to take cut- 

 tings from the best plants in September and 

 October. The cuttings should be six inches 

 long, plump and healthy, and they strike in 

 two days, if put into a brisk bottom heat, 

 planted in pots, three parts rilled with dry 

 turf, chopped small, with the addition of a 

 little sand, and powdered charcoal. These 

 are planted out as soon as they have made 

 good roots— say a fortnight after making 

 the cuttings — and they bear well at Christ- 

 mas. If raised from seed, the sowings 

 should be made — one earl}' in August, and 

 another at the end of September. The first 

 will fruit before Christmas, and, at the turn 

 of the year, will be full of vigour ; the second 

 will begin to bear about the end of February, 

 and lie in their prime in March. To cut line 

 fruit on Christmas-day, the plants ought to 

 be in bearing by the 1st of December, and if 

 you delay the sowing beyond the middle of 



ment, though I have often had a good crop 

 at that time, from plants sown in the middle 

 of September. 



I always raise cucumber plants in pots. 

 Never sow the seed where the plants are to 

 remain, not even for ridges in the open 

 ground. In planting out in the bed over the 

 tank, one precaution of great moment is, to 

 use only a little soil at a time, just enough 

 for the roots to work in freely ; if the bed 

 was made up at first, a good deal of the soil 

 would sour before the roots got into it, and 

 then the vines would languish. The soil 

 should be a fresh loam, well chopped up, 

 and quite mellow. Having abundance of 

 an unctuous yellow loam, we generally chop 

 up with it, about a third part of the soil from 

 an old turf stack, and in this mixture the 

 cucumbers thrive amazingly. Having raised 

 a little hillock for each plant, and made the 

 top of each the same level as the whole bed 

 is to be ultimately, we knock the bottoms 

 clean out of a few forty- eight pots, and 

 press them firmly into the centre of the hil- 

 lock, rim downwards, and with, consequently, 

 the open bottom upwards. The seedlings 

 are then carefully turned out of their small 

 pots, into the inverted forty-eights, dressed 

 up neatly, and without injury to the tender 

 roots, and the circular orifice round the col- 

 lar of the plant covered with a few pieces of 

 tile or slate. It is astonishing what an im- 

 provement this plan is over planting in a 

 made-up bed. The plants soon take hold of 

 the new soil, and extend their roots till they 

 touch the sides of the pots, and then go down 

 into the base of the hillock, and, in a short 

 time, require an addition of soil. To pre- 

 vent the growth of fungi, or the caking 

 of the soil, the hillocks are stirred lightly 

 every few days, and every time earth is 

 added. The inverted pots- are, of course, ul- 

 timately buried by the additions of soil 

 around them, but the}' still continue to pro- 

 tect the roots, and give support to the plant 

 at the collar. In watering and pruning, 

 they are also of use, as a protection against 

 injury. 



The plants are trained up a trellis about 

 15 inches from the glass. To get the trellis 

 covered quickly, we take up the leading 

 shoots to within a trifle of the top, before we 

 stop them, and thereby we secure better 



