December 18, 1902. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



147 



Basket of Carnations. No. 4. 



GREENHOUSE CONSTRUCTION. 



[Read before the St. Louis Florists' Club. 

 Dec. 11, 1902. by J. W. Duntord, Jr.] 



The subject of building and equij ping 

 greenhouse structures is a \ital one to 

 all of us as florists, and always inter- 

 esting, especially to the grower. Know- 

 ing that all of you are practical men. 

 I shall not attempt to enter into many 

 details with which you are all quite 

 familiar. For instance, you don't want 

 me to tell you how deep to put your 

 posts, how many coats of paint to use, 

 nor how to make $2.50 build a $1,000 

 greenhouse. You know all these things, 

 or ought to. 



llany men make a great mistake in 

 not selecting a suitable piece of ground 

 to l)uild upon. It is of the utmost im- 

 portance that the ground not only be 

 good, tillable and located close to a good 

 market or means of transportation to 

 same, hut it must be right topographic- 

 ally. However, what may be considered 

 right for one class of tlorists would not 

 suit the other so well. For example, 

 the wholesale gi'cwer, pure and simple, 

 who is an expansionist from Expansion- 

 ville, would want something different 

 from the man who is grower and retailer 

 combined. The first would say, "Let me 

 hie to the woods and fields where land 

 is cheap and nature reigns supreme, 

 unhampered by some of the disagree- 

 able things that have come with modern 

 civilization." The latter would say. "I 

 must go where there is a close retail 

 market and be satisfied with what land 

 I can afford to buy and depend on leased 

 land for the balance of my needs.'' 



I shall say little about this last man, 

 for, while he has to put up with more 

 or less smoke and other inconveniences, 

 he probably has, in most cases, advan- 

 tages over his countiy brother that bal- 

 ance these drawbacks, such as 

 retail prices for his goods, city 

 water. electric lights. etc. The 

 man I am going to advise (will 



come to "Greenhouse Construction" pret- 

 ty soon) is the man who is looking for 

 property on which to build and build 

 and build till he dies, and leaves the 

 same song with the identical tune to be 

 taken up by his posterity. To be serious 

 and to the point, we will say select a 

 piece of propert}- with the right kind 

 of soil and jilenty ot good water — this is 

 the first consideration. Secondh', get 

 as close as you can to a good market, 

 on a railroad that runs more than one 

 train a day, and as near a switch as you 

 can. Personally I should prefer 



ground that is slightly rolling, with at 

 least enough that is fairly level for all 

 building purposes. For this latter pur- 

 pose the ground could either slope east- 

 ward, southward, southeast, southwest, 

 westward or be practically level. We 

 do not consider this part of the subject 

 as im[ortant as some people ao. 



An ideal piece of property would have 

 a hill, the top of which could be utilized 

 for his clear water and manure tanks. 

 It would liave a hollow, too, at the rear 

 or north side of his greenhouses. This 

 would save considerable scraping in ex- 

 cavating for his boiler shed, and if it 

 was an accommodating hollow there 

 would be a natural passage-way for 

 wheeling out the ashes from the boiler 

 shed, instead of the unnatural way in 

 vogue in 75 per cent of our establish- 

 ments of today — i. e.. that of carrying 

 them up in a box on a narrow, rickety 

 flight of stairs, to Ije dustily dumped 

 into our traditional carriage — the wheel- 

 barrow. 



Now for the subject for which I am 

 paid. I am going to treat it in a gener- 

 al way. We will presiune our man 

 has his real estate and owns it. for I 

 am altogether oprosed to building on 

 leased property. How to build — shall it 

 be east and west or north and south ? 

 Shall we have connected or detached 

 bouses, lartre or small, iron or wood, and 

 a variety of other things present them- 



selves to our minds, and furthermore, 

 perplex us, for in all these things doc- 

 tors disagree. For the first proposition 

 we say build according to the lay of 

 your land. We can see no great ad- 

 vantage that one lias over the other. 

 For the second, we say, most emphat- 

 ically, let them be connected and if 

 all are to be used for the same purpose 

 let there be no partitions between the 

 houses except possiblj' one partition for 

 every four or five houses. This is mere- 

 ly a good thing in times of great wind. 

 It is true that detached houses, be they 

 east and west or north and south, will 

 give you more light; this is obvious. 

 However, when you consider the ques- 

 tion of fuel and taking care of the tem- 

 perature in both kinds of houses you 

 will all vote in favor of the connected 

 house. 



The size of house depends largely upon 

 the depth of one's pocket-book and the 

 purpose for which it is intended. On 

 general principles, and for most pur- 

 poses make the houses large, not unrea- 

 sonably wide, as the width controls the 

 height of ridge, and a very wide house 

 means a high ridge, with a lot of dead 

 space to keep heated. From 25 to 30 

 feet is a good ^vidth. We find that a 

 25-foot house gives us three center and 

 two side benches that are about the 

 right width. The length is immaterial, 

 providing the house does not get too 

 much fall, remembering, of course, the 

 feelings of the poor men who have to 

 wheel out the soil in the summer time. 

 We hope to say more about this soil 

 subject later. If your means will allow 

 you to cover 2.500 square foot of grouuu 

 with a greenhouse, make that house 

 rather 2.5x100 feet tlian 121x200 feet, 

 unless you adopt the Dietsch patent 

 house that our friend Ammann is going 

 to tell us all about in the future. 



lion or wood. — There seems to be, as 

 in many other things, two extremes: 

 On the one hand we have the man who 

 says: "Build as cheaply as you can. 

 ilake the 2 or 3 original coats of paint 

 last the entire life time of a house, and 

 when it has to come down, don't say 

 'Ain't it a. shame,' but rather, 'this house 

 has paid for itself and more. too. Be- 

 sides this we have the glass left.' " On 

 the other hand is a man, and he is gen- 

 erally a wealthy one, who feels justi- 

 fied, and he is, if he can afford it, in 

 building a house almost entirely of 

 iron, with 24x36 glass. We may say in- 

 cidentally: "We are not it." Our be- 

 lief is that a wooden house, with gut- 

 ters, posts, purlins, purlin and ridge 

 supports all of iron, is the proper thing 

 for the average man. People who make 

 a living and develop a longing to build 

 greenhouses by the process of raising 

 plants and cut flowers, can hardly afford 

 to build costly iron houses. If they do 

 succeed in building one to begin with 

 they generally change their minds before 

 the second is built. 



Now, about the ventilatins sash. This 

 is a favorite subject of mine. We are 

 not satisfied with the kind now in use, 

 nor are we satisfied witn any other kind 

 we can think of. The nearest approach 

 to our ideal in those of the present day, 

 is the one that hinges at the bnttom, be- 

 cause it is easv to raise. ''But what 

 about the rain?" you say. "i'es, that's 

 the rub. The matter of raising the 

 sash of one or two houses in spring and 

 fall is small, but when it comes to 1.5 

 or 20 it is hard work. How would a 

 ventilating sash, not hinged, but bal- 

 anced in the middle do, or one that would 



