THE PROPER CONDITIONS 9 
This is much better than the use of pot saucers, 
especially for small pots. Where a bay-window is 
used, if cut off from the room by glass doors, or 
even by curtains, it will aid greatly in keeping a 
moist atmosphere about the plants and preventing 
dust from settling on the leaves when sweeping or 
dusting is being done. 
A window-box can readily be made of planed inch 
pine boards, tightly fitted and tightly joined. It 
should be six to ten inches wide and six to eight 
inches deep. If a plain box is used, it will be 
necessary to bore inch holes every six inches or so 
through the bottom to provide for carrying off of 
any excess of water — although, with the method 
of filling the box described in a later chapter, those 
holes would hardly ever be called into service. 
Plants in the house in the winter, however, are as 
likely to suffer from too much water as from too 
little, and therefore, to prevent the disagreeable 
possibility of having dirty drainage water running 
down onto several feet of floor, it will be almost as 
easy, and far better, to have the box constructed 
with a bottom made of two pieces, sloping slightly 
to the center where one hole is made in which a 
cork can be kept. A false bottom of tin or zinc, 
with the requisite number of holes cut out, and 
supported by three or four inch strips of wood 
running lengthways of the box, supplies the drain- 
age. These strips must, of course, be cut in the 
