Jme 12, I8S6. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



429 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



Month 



Day 



Tn 



W 



Th 



F 



S 



Smr 



M 



OJOCK 



after 

 Ban. 



m. 8. 

 82 

 19 

 7 

 OboW 

 19 

 B2 

 4j 



Day 



o( 



Year. 



103 

 1B4 



165 

 If.S 

 107 

 168 

 169 



From obserr.itions taken near London during the last thirty-nine years, the averade day temoerature of the week is 72 2° ; and its night 

 temperataro 48^.8. The greatest heat was 90\ on the 12:h and 13th, 1812 ; and the lowest cold 30=, on the 16th, 1850. Tho greatest faU of 

 ram was 0.84 men. N.B. — The Calendar contains the names of plants flowering in the preeuhouso. 



FLUED WALLS— PROTECTING FRUIT TREES. 



" Bob " (page 366), we are 

 indebted for the section of a 

 fined wall ; but it would ap- 

 pear that the object of the 

 builder was to so construct 

 his wall that the trees trained 

 over it would be roasted in some parts and starved in others 

 — at aU events, the wall when heated would have the effect 

 of subjecting the trees to extremes of heat and cold, 



We may not unreasonably conclude that the effects of 

 these extremes were disastrous ; and " Bon " informs us 

 that " the Peach wall, 290 feet Ions, which had, some years 

 ago, been artificially heated at no little expense and trouble 

 by keeping sixteen furnaces going," has been " left unlieated 

 for years," though he assigns no reason for the disuse of 

 the means for heating. 



I can confinn your correspondent's statement as to the 

 nse of fires for heating Peach walls liaving been discon- 

 tinued in certain cases for years ; and having seen the 

 effects of walls artificially heated in the manner described 

 by him, I am enabled to state that the results were far 

 from gratifying. I have also seen bot walls on which 

 Peaches, Nectarines, and Apricots were grown satisfac- 

 torily, and ripened from a fortnight to three weeks earlier 

 than on an unhealed wall. That a lieated wall should, in 

 the majority of instances, be so injurious to the Peach trees 

 trained upon it as to completely spoil the trees in a very 

 short time, and on the other hand be so conducive to cer- 

 tainty and earliness of crop, I hope to be able to show is 

 not due so much to the greater pains taken by those who 

 are successful, but mainly to the construction of the wall 

 not being such as to insure great extremes of heat and cold 

 being avoided, and the wall not being so heated by the flues 

 that a gentle warmth may be att'orded from tho bottom to 

 the top. In building such waU-s a total disregard of the 

 principle that an equal dLstributiou of the heat to every 

 part should be as far as possible seciu-ed, has led to the 

 conclusion that fined walls ar» practically more injm-ious 

 than beneficial to the trees trained on them. This I readily 

 admit is true of the majority of hot walls as constructed, 

 and of which " Bob's " section aflbrds an example ; but I 

 differ from tliose who. because they see one or many hot 

 walls so constructed that the fires cannot be lighted with- 

 out proving injurious to the trees, come to the conclusion 

 that Peaches, Nectarines, and Apricots have not been and 

 cannot be grown on hot walls with a certainty of a crop. 



It was not till 1851 that I saw Apricots, Peaches, and 

 Nectarines grown on a hot or fined wall good as respects 

 both crop and quality, and from a fortnight to three weeks 

 earlier than from unheated walls. At the time named I 

 was serving at a place where the garden was bounded on 

 Xo, sn,— Ys:. in M«w Bunss, 



the north by a wall 150 yards long and l.'S feet high ; the 

 garden was a parallelogram 100 yards long by 100 yards 

 wide, enclosed by walls 10 feet high, divided in the centre 

 into two parallelograms 75 yai'ds one way and 100 yards 

 the other by means of a cross wall from north to south. 

 There were tho usual slips outside the walls. Now the- 

 north wall was a hot or fined wall, and the furnaces were 

 to the north of this wall ; one half the length of the south 

 waU, or 75 yards, being occupied by Peaches and Nec- 

 tarines, and the other half by Apricot trees. This wall, a% 

 well as the others, was rebuilt in the years 18:^0 and 1831, 

 and in order to have the best walls and fruit-tree borders 

 the gardener visited, through the kindness and liberality .. 

 of his employers, the most noted places in tlie kingdom, 

 and he gleaned this very important fact — viz., " No hot 

 wall that I saw at any of the places visited, having the 

 fires lighted, had a tree upon it wortli looking at, or fruit 

 on it worth naming ; but though I saw hot vtaXls in most 

 of the gardens visited, the majority of them were not 

 heated, the trees being protected by netting, which was 

 foimd sufficient." It had been decided to flue the whole of 

 the walls to protect the blossom of tho trees from spring . 

 frosts, but so convinced was the gardener of the practical 

 inutUity and injurious effects of a flued wall to the trees 

 upon it, that all tlie walls were built solid, except the wall 

 already alluded to, and of that one half was flued after 

 the maimer described at page .'i6(i, and the other half in 

 the way whicli I shall shortly describe. The part of waU. 

 flued after the manner described at page ;lt;6 was devoted 

 exclusively to Peaches and Nectarines, and the other to 

 Apricots, except two trees, which were Peaches. They' 

 were the original trees that were upon the Apricot wall, 

 and the whole extent of the wall was covered; but the 

 trees on that part of the wall occupied by Peaches were • 

 not the original trees, but a second planting, nine years • 

 old, and coveiing tlie wall entirely. 



At the time mentioned I had the care of these walls and . 

 gardens, under the gardener (who lived to serve the family 

 of his employer fifty years), and it was a rnle to heat one- 

 half of the Apricot wall in order to obtain fruit earlier than 

 on the unheated part, the fires being lighted on cold frosty' 

 nights after the white of the blossom was generally diftiu- 

 guishable, and fires were continued on cold nights and 

 days until danger from frost was over. In 18.')1 tlie fires 

 were first Ughted on the 21st of February, the netting 

 having been on a fortnight earlier. On tlie Ist of March 

 the protective netting was put on the Peaches and Necta- 

 rines, and the blossoms were so far advanced tliat I con- 

 sidered it desirable to light the fires belonging to the lialf 

 of the Peacli wall in order to have Peaches, as I thought, 

 earlier tlian on the unheated wall, and I therefore liad foot 

 furnaces set to work ; but not knowing whetlier I was doing 

 right or wrong, baring no orders on the matter, I took 

 the opinion of the gardener, then ill, and his answer was 

 " Not to lieat the Peach wall under any circmnstances," 

 but to keep the netting on day and night until the flowers 

 opened, and to keep it on during frosty days afterwards. 



The fires were discontinued for the Apricots after the 

 third week in May until the fi-uit began to swell for ripening, 

 No. SM.-'Vou ZXXV, OtD Sbmm. 



