September 2G, 1865. ] JOURNAL OP HOllTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAllDENEE. 



249 



find on such occasions had much conversation upon Hardening, 

 iiiid imrticularly truit-treo cultivation, llo arrived after darli, 

 and when he had taken some refroslimeut our eouversatiou 

 naturally turned upon a subject so interestiiif; to Ijotli. " Well," 

 he said, " you will show me great thinf;s in your garden to- 

 mon'ow?" "Yes, I will show you what will interest you, what 

 I think you cannot see in all France — a proof that our climate 

 here, in the north of England, is superior to yours for early 

 fruit." " But, Monsieur, it requires to know you a long time 

 to believe it." " Then I will prove it before we go to bed." 

 " You will prove to me that your summer months--for it is the 

 summer months that ripen the fruit — are sujjerior to ours in 

 France ?" " No, excuse me, I have only to prove that they 

 are colder ; you speak of the end of a crop. Let us begin at 

 the beginning. First, the trees must have a rest ; wo will say 

 my trees have made their growth and sot their buds, what 

 they want then is cold weather to make them lose their leaves ; 

 liave you that in France ?" " I begin to understand you ; then 

 tell me what you can show me." " Peach trees in perfect 

 health without leaves, without leaves and still in August !" 

 "My dear fellow you have proved it, if you can rijien their 

 fruit as early in proportion ; hut tell mo liow you in Eni;land 

 do this." I told him I did as Mr. Kivers recommends; when 

 July came in I shut off the heat from the pipes and let the 

 night air in. In July the thermometer at niglit will range 

 about 55°, in August 45' ; of course, I mean, in a house under 

 this treatment. 



Any one spending, as I did, three years ago, the months of 

 September and October in south-western France, Swits;erland, 

 and northern Italy, could not fail, while atbxiiring the beautiful 

 autumnal tints, to be impressed with the influence cold night 

 temperature has on vegetation. Mr. Rivers says his French 

 friends exclaim on entering his orchard-house, " I'oj'te notrc 

 climat!" and so I kept thinking this must be my climate. 

 The following August and September the thermometer marked 

 95° in the day, and 45° at night, in my Peach-house. I am 

 quite convinced that nothing that has been written by the 

 greatest enemies of orchard-houses has done them a tithe of 

 the harm that this advice so often m'ged by Mr. Rivers has. 

 Try my practice, those who have orchard-houses ; put in pipes, 

 and in proportion as you are north advance the time of start- 

 ing the house, and your troubles will cease, for you will have 

 as warm weather as there is at Sawbridgeworth, to ripen j'our 

 fruit and ensure your trees being well set with buds before the 

 summer is over ; but do not continue to think you can ripen 

 your fruit with a temperature, and in spite of a treatment that 

 has sent mine to rest two years running. 



Orchard-houses have taught us many things, but perhaps 

 the most valuable of all is the loiowledge of the sun's power 

 over them. The large firms who supply pot trees have all 

 built immense houses, and though I do not recollect ever see- 

 ing any account of the temperatures they thus obtain, I know 

 that these are very high, and the reason why they tlius show us 

 this great heating power of the sim is because they are, so to 

 speak, half empty, the pot trees they are built to grow seldom 

 attaining in such hands more thau 6 feet. I have said I know 

 that the temperatures run very high ; I compute them at 100° 

 for May and September, and 110° to 120° for June, July, and 

 August. If I am wrong, let some of these firms speak. It is 

 doing no service to horticultm'e to lead purchasers to think 

 these httle trees are set with buds at low temperatures ; and 

 let me induce some who are building to accept the experience 

 thus gained, and build large, square, tall houses, to train their 

 Vines and fruit trees that they may take advantage of cubic , 

 measure, at the same time gi^'ing ample access to prune or 

 syringe the trees, and by growing the foliage so that it will not 

 keep out the sun's rays, save their coals while they are warming 

 their house by a much preferable heat, and be able to enjoy 

 higher temperatures than it would be safe to attain by any 

 other means. — G. H. 



ScRELYyonr correspondent " G. H." has taken to gardening 

 blindfolded, or he would not say we " have actually retrograded 

 in building houses." With respect to his strictures on lean-to 

 houses aud Pine-pits being the same tliat Miller and Speechly 

 recommended a century ago, I can see no better mode of build- 

 ing houses for early forcing in om' latitude. " Large, square, 

 tail houses " may, perhaps, be adapted to some gardens. As a 

 rule the paraUelogi'am is the fittest shape for fruit-houses, 

 either lean-to or span-roofed ; and if houses of the tirst-named 

 sort are well built and well adapted by their angles for forcing 



during early winter, no better form can bo invented. Tliere is 

 no reti'ograding in employing such houses. 



With regard to tall sjian-roofcd houses, " G. H." may see 

 scores of them in different parts of the country from 20 to 

 30 feet wide, and from 50 to 250 feet in length, and but few of 

 them with Vines and Peach trees trained under the glass 

 so as to exclude the sun. It is now toUirably well known that 

 standard and half-slandiird Peach, Nectarine, Apricot, and 

 otlier fruit trees planted in the borders of such houses, their 

 heads carefully ju-uued in sunnuer so as to make them take 

 a lateral growth, soon become most abundantly fertile, and 

 owing to the sun shining through the unsh.'uled roof the most 

 perfect ripening climate is formed. The pruning of the trees 

 is almost a work of pleasure, and there being no trellises to 

 keep in order and to keep the young shoots tied to, the labour 

 is but trifling. 



As to the transverse trellises running from fi'ont to back for 

 lean-to houses, although when furnished with leaves or shoots 

 they would look much like a Lincolnshire decoy for wild fowl, 

 yet they would give much greater produce to the market gar- 

 dener than trees trained under the roof. I know of one lean-to 

 forcing-house for Peaches, the back wall is covered with tine 

 trees, the area of the house has espaliers trained to trellises as 

 if they were common garden trees, and the intervals are filled 

 with pyramidal Nectarines in pots. The wall trees bear weU, 

 the espaliers and trees in pots ditto, and all is satisfactory, the 

 produce being much larger in my opinion than if a trellis were 

 placed under the glass in the old way, occupying all the space 

 and not allowing any sun, except a scant supply to the upper 

 part of the back wall, to penetrate the leaf-covered treUis. 



The training of Vines to upright rods, and in some instances 

 to trellises, in all cast's Ifaiiiip the roof clear, is a nice mode of 

 culture. This is treated of by Mr. Kivers in " The Orchard- 

 House." He states that the produce of a house with Vines 

 trained to upright stakes will be more than KJO per cent, in 

 excess of a house of the same size where the Vines are trained 

 under the glass. I have one house 20 feet by 14 — it should be 

 7.{ feet high at the sides and 15 feet high in the centre, at 

 present it is not so high — well, in this house I have a path in 

 the centre, and in each side-border are twenty-four Vines, three 

 rows in each ; forty-eight Vines in all. I hope to see them 

 reach 12 feet high on the average, and I can see that their 

 produce, for they have commenced to bear, must be enormously 

 in excess of roof Vines ; for I could only have twelve roof Vines 

 in my small house, giving me ISO feet of bearing stems, 

 whereas my forty-eight Vines will give me 576 feet. This 

 calculation is, I am sure, school-boyish, but, I trust, easily 

 understood. From the roof admitting every ray of sunshine 

 the Grapes, even Frontignans, ripen well. 



It remains to be calculated which kind of culture would give 

 the larger produce in a given space. We must suppose a tail 

 span-roofed house 24 feet wide, 8 feet high at the sides, and 

 16 feet high in the centre, the roof kept perfectly clear, and 

 the area of the house planted with espaliers trained to trelUses 

 either parallel to the house or transverse ; in the former case 

 there would he room for six rows of espaliers trained to trellises 

 averaging 12 feet in height ; there is not a doubt but such an 

 arrangement would give an immense quantity of fruit, and 

 consume labour to an equal degree. We must now take a 

 house of the same dimensions, and plant it with low standard 

 trees, their heads pruned so as to give them a lateral tendency. 

 The expense of the treUis, no trifle, would be saved, and also 

 the constant labour all the summer of tying and training. Two 

 rows of such trees could be planted on each side of the central 

 walk, or the centre of the house could be occupied with the 

 trees, aud a path made on both sides. The espaliers would 

 require to be planted 20 feet apart, so that a house 60 feet 

 long would in its six rows contain eighteen trees. Standards 

 might be planted 10 feet apart, and twenty-four permanent 

 trees be planted ; but for the first five or seven years temporary 

 half-standards might be planted, so that the house might be 

 made to contain forty-eight trees : these would give a large 

 produce. 



The whole matter is full of interest ; but your correspondent 

 " G. H." must not think that " this one idea, that nothing will 

 succeed well that is not tr.ained under glass " (the roof), is 

 the idea of the present day. There are hundreds of "tall 

 houses " in which the roofs are clear, and fruit trees are gi-own in 

 them to great perfection. A friend writes me, " My pyramidal 

 Peach trees are maiTeUously beautiful, they are 12 feet high, 

 and covered with fine fruit from head to foot ; the fruit at the 

 lower part of the trees quite as fine as that near the roof." 



