106 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[April, 



the winter. Odontoglossum Cervantesii is best 

 grown on blocks, in about the same temperature 

 in winter, but in summer grown in a north house 

 and always kept wet. I have a number of these 

 now coming in flower under this treatment. I 

 would like to know if " C. H. S." has grown any 

 of these plants, under treen in the open air, and 

 how (hev have succeeded? 



GLAZING. 



BY M. M. GREEN, I,OtIISVILLE. KV. 



Having built a house with permanent rafters, 

 and desiring to glaze it in such a manner that 

 the glass could be easily removed in the sum- 

 mer, I stretched ordinary candle wicking from 

 end to end of the rafters, letting it lie on the 

 shoulder of the rabbet, and bedding the glass on 

 this, not lapping it, but laying it with one end 

 against the other and tacking it down with ordi- 

 nary tacks, four to each pane. I have in this 

 the closest roof in a range of eight houses glazed 

 with putty. The work of removal, as any prac- 

 tical man will see, will be very light, with but 

 little danger of breakage, and the work of re-glaz- 

 ing will be as light as at first. 



RAISING CHINESE CHRYSANTHEMUMS 

 FROM SEED. 



BY W. FALCONER. 



Dr. H. P. Walcott, of Cambridge, has succeed- 

 ed in raising a large number of Chinese and 

 Japanese Chrysanthemums from seed. Some of 

 his seedlings are of good merit, especially a pale 

 pifrple and a chestnut-colored Japanese, and a 

 crimson and yellow reflexed Chinese flower. 

 Now, raising seedlings of Chrysanthemums (C. 

 Indicum) is no uncommon thing in Europe, but 

 I have not heard of it before in America ; still, 

 seeds of it are advertised in some seedsmen's 

 catalogues. Whence are the seeds obtained? 

 From plants grown in the Channel Islands, the 

 South of France and Algeria, but mostly from 

 Algeria. But Dr. Walcott's seeds were raised, 

 in 1880, in his own garden at Cambridge. 

 This is the first instance of raising Chrysanthe- 

 mum seeds in America that I have heard of; do 

 any of your readers know of another? 



The seeds were sown out of doors in July ; 

 they soon germinated, and by the end of August 

 had formed nice little plants, which were lifted 



and potted into four and five-inch pots, and 

 nearly all of them blossomed during the last two 

 weeks of October and the first fortnight of 

 November. 



The Doctor tells me that the plants from which 

 he saved the seeds, at and after blooming time, 

 were kept in the greenhouse, where the atmos- 

 phere was as dry as he could keep it, without 

 using unnecessary fire-heat. He considers that 

 a dry atmosphere is essential to success. 



On December 17th, the Doctor told me he 

 had recently returned from a visit to Georgia, 

 and was assured there that the cultivation of the 

 larger Chinese varieties was on account of their 

 hot, dry, summer weather — an impossibility. He 

 further told me that he did not think he should 

 be able to secure any seed from his own plants 

 this season, nor did he find any of the plants in 

 the Southern States with perfected seed ; the 

 moisture of their Novembers seems to be as fatal 

 to the ripening of the seed as our greenhouse 

 conditions are. 



HEATING BY STEAM AND WATER COM- 

 BINED. 



BY JAMES BROWN, GARDENER, STATE FARM, LAN- 

 CASTER, OHIO. 



I notice in the Gardener's Monthly that the 

 subject of steam heating for greenhouses is at- 

 tracting a good deal of attention at present ; and, 

 if agreeable, I will relate our mode of heating 

 with steam and water. 



We use the ordinary four-inch cast iron pipe, 

 put up the same as for hot water apparatus ; but 

 in place of hot water boiler, we have a cast-iron 

 tank, five feet in length and two feet in diameter, 

 placed in north end of house, underneath the 

 floor, below the level of the pipes. In this tank 

 there is a coil of one hundred and fifty feet of 

 one and one-quarter-inch steam pipe. The steam 

 is brought from a main pipe in one of the build- 

 ings nearest to the greenhouse in the same sized 

 pipe, inch and a quarter, the entire distance from 

 boiler, seven hundred feet, with twenty pounds 

 of steam pressure. We have about five hundred 

 feet of pipe in this house, and raising this one 

 and aquarter-inch valve the thirty-second part 

 of an inch, will make the water boil. You can 

 readily calculate how much water this steam 

 will heat by opening the valve to its full extent. 



In reading Mr. Murdoch's article in the 

 MoNTrtLY, where he tells about taking out two 



