December S, 1868. ] 



JOUBNAL OF HOBTICULTUKB AND COTTAGE GAEDENER. 



423 



or wherever it is wished that the bed should be highest. China, 

 Tea, and Noisette Koses, sliould be kept in pots till the spring. 

 Other kinds may be planted with advantage about this season, 

 when the weather is dry and not frosty. The florist may now 

 take breath. His Tulips are all safely in the ground, and in a 

 growing state, and, comparatively speaking, out of harm's way. 

 The Carnation grower's chief care mast now be to prepare his 

 compost for next season. His turf must be turned often, very 

 often, during the next three months, carefully picking out of it 

 the florist's plague, the wiroworm. His leaf soil also must be 

 shaken up and sweetened, and a proper quantity of thoroughly 

 decomposed stable mtm iro must bo made .sure of, whatever 

 other crop go without. 



GBEENHOUSr: AND COXSEKVATOnY. 



The only attention required now for greenhouse plants is to 

 keep them free from damp, by having the house well aired, and 

 all dead leaves removed. Stir the soil in the pots occasion- 

 ally,_aud use as little water as possible. Euphorbia jac- 

 quinioiflora is an excellent conservatory plant while it is in 

 blossom, but at other times it must have stove treatment. Last 

 season about this time some larj^e plants of it were pruned, to 

 Bee if by a little forcing in spriug they could be induced to 

 flower early this winter, but the experiment failed in some 

 measure ; as soon as the plants began growing in spring, they 

 also flowered on the young growth, but not satisfactorily, and 

 now_ they are not more forward than others that flowered last 

 Christmas, and that were pruned in January. 



BTOVE. 



The highest night temperature iu the stove for this month 

 should not exceed 60", which may bo maintained as long as the 

 weather keeps open ; should the weather, however, suddenly 

 change to hard frost, do not strive to keep up this temperature 

 by strong fires ; 50° will be high enough in very severe weather, 

 and strong fires will not be needed, even to keep up that heat, 

 so that in many cases water must be sprinkled over the paths, 

 pipes, ifec, to prevent the highly dried air from injuring the 

 plants. Strong stovo climbers that do not blossom freely 

 should now be root-pruned, by cutting off some of their largest 

 roots near the surface, or if they are to be taken up next spring 

 and tried iu boxes, this is a good time to begin to prepare them, 

 not, however, by cutting their roots, but by tracing one half 

 of them to their extremities, and then placing them near the 

 surface, with some light compost thrown in amongst them. By 

 the end of January these roots will have formed a fresh set of 

 young fibres, and then the other half of the roots may be 

 served after the same manner, but leaving the plant in the 

 same place till later in the spring. This is a safe mode of 

 treating plants that are to be removed from the borders of any 

 of the houses, or for checking their luxuriance. 



PITS. 



Such a season as this proves how useful temporary structures 

 are for protecting greenhouse plants late in the autumn ; the 

 general plan is to cram all the pits and houses on the first ap- 

 pearance of frost in October, whereas almost all the plants of 

 this kind might yet be partially in the open air, and be much 

 benefited by the treatment. For some famOies of plants. Pelar- 

 goniums, for instance, that are worked much out of season, pits 

 and structures of the sort are particularly useful. To have 

 fine specimens of Pelargoniums in blossom from August and 

 September, October is the best time to cut down the plants, 

 and from that time till after Christmas they should be as much 

 exposed to the open air as rain and frost will permit ; then 

 they wUl only be coming into leaf again, and after two months' 

 protection in the greenhouse, &c., they may be again turned 

 out into temporary pits to keep them back, and as the warm 

 weather comes, they may be placed under a north wall. — 

 W. Keank. 



DOINGS OF THE LAST WEEK. 



TIIIELY HINTS. 



Managancnt of Fires and Flues. — We are told we ought to have 

 been more explicit on this subject a few weeks ago, as many 

 new readers have not back volumes to refer to, and since the 

 humourous account given by " A. P». L.," at pages 351 and 855, 

 telling how a flue that would not draw was made to burn well 

 at last, we have had numerous questions about it, the most of 

 which might at once have been put to the test of experiment, 

 and the only one that needs an answer, is that referring to the 

 remedy that is to be applied when there ai-e no soot doors to 

 open in order to light a fire. 



Now, when a boiler is set over a furnace, and there is only a 

 short flue to the chimney, there is generally no want of a good 

 draught. Unless well managed, the draught would be strong 

 enough to take three parts of the heat up the chimney, and send 

 it out to heat the general atmosphere, a matter of importance 

 to the person who has the fuel to pay for. 



When a furnace has to heat a flue, whethpr the furnace is 

 also to heat a boiler or not, it is a matter of first importance 

 that the furnace grating or fire-bars should be from 24 to 

 30 inches below the bottom of the flue. If this matter is looked 

 to, there will rarely bo any difficulty as to quick draught, except 

 where the fluo is very long, has several turnings, or is damp 

 inside, either from moisture percolating, or long disuse. A 

 flue connected with a furnace that heats a boiler before the 

 heated air goes into the fluo, is more likely, if long, to draw 

 slowly, because a good portion of the heat is absorbed by the 

 boiler before it enters the fluo. When heating by hot water, 

 and the most is to be made of the fuel, it is well to have a flue 

 in addition, instead of sending so much heat up the chimney. 

 When a large boiler is used, a flue taken from it might thus 

 heat a separate house. We have iu our eye a conservatory 

 heated in this way ; a boiler and pipes, and a flue from the fur- 

 nace, with three turns in the back wall, so that before the 

 heated air reached the chimney it was tolerably cool. In this 

 case, dreading the sour smoke that was sure to fill the stoke- 

 hole at the first lighting, we generally chose a dry bright day 

 for putting on the first fire in the autumn, and if that did not 

 do, we just adopted the engineer's remedy, and put a fire in the 

 flue, by taking out an iron smoke plate ; excellent assistants in 

 all flues, as thus the flue may be easily cleaned without break- 

 ing or knocking it to pieces. 



In many other instances, where the flues were not very long, 

 where there were no soot doors, and yet from not having a fire 

 for many months, there was apt to be back smoke in the stoke- 

 hole, we found a draught was at once secured by going to the 

 chimney top, and lighting dry straw or shavings in it a few 

 feet from the top ; a few handsful generally did all that was 

 necessary, as the air thus rarified drew the heavier air to supply 

 the comparative vacuum, and the draught in the furnace was at 

 once secured. As already stated, however, unless the flue has 

 many turns, or is very long, the sinking of the furnace low 

 enough will generally insure draught. We have known cases 

 where chimneys were raised a couplo of yards to get free draught, 

 when the sinking of the furnace-bars 1'2 inches would have been 

 more effectual. The only drawback to this, especially when the 

 flues go beneath the floor of a greenhouse, is, that the stoke- 

 hole must go all that lower, a matter of no great importance, 

 except when water comes in the way, as then means must be 

 taken by cement or otherwise to keep the place dry. 



As regards the management of fires, we are not surprised to 

 find, by these pages, that there are so many complaints about 

 the quantity of fuel consumed iu heating boilers, &c., Jjecause, 

 in the first place, we have never yet worked a boiler that did 

 not require more fuel to keep up a continuous heat than the 

 purchaser was given to understand it would do. " Only see," 

 says the vendor, " what a small supply of fuel will heat the 

 water sufficiently," and so it may, but little or nothing will 

 not keep it hot. We can well recollect in one case, how 

 chaldron after chaldron of coke used to be grumbled at. There 

 was never anything like the consumption of fuel before, no, 

 never; but there was another no-uever, never mentioned, that 

 instead of being satisfied with Grapes in August, they must be 

 had in the beginning of May. But not knowing all about this, 

 wo actually had all the huge clinkers broken up and pitched 

 into the furnace a second time, until they came out like as 

 much iron, and, determined to have something to burn, we used 

 up lots of half decomposed caky dung fast approaching the 

 peaty state, and obtained heat from it too ; but the wind one 

 night took the smoke and fumes to the windows, and after that 

 there was no more talk about the waste of coke. But for that 

 fortunate wind, we would soon have settled some waggon loads 

 of the manure, of which there was no scarcity ; but it was not 

 the most pleasant thing to work among, and we v.ere glad to let 

 it alone. It made us do our stoking, however, with such care 

 and circumspection that wo could be satisfied no one who 

 knew the facts of the case could say there was waste. 



We have no doubt that complaints are often just, because 

 there is waste either from ignorance or inattention, so much so, 

 that iu all places where there are many furnaces a good stoker 

 is just another word for a good saving, and especially in dis- 

 tricts where coal is yet dear, or has to be far driven. So much 

 is this the case, that for heating small houses, where a person 



