USES AND MANAGEMENT OF COLD FRAMES. . 47 



here we have still a few old fogies among us, whose timid- 

 ity or obstinacy in this matter prevents them from making 

 this use of their sashes, which thereby causes them an an- 

 nual loss of $2 per sash, and as some of them have over a 

 thousand sashes, the loss is of some magnitude. 



In my own practice, I have made my sashes do double 

 duty in this way for fifteen years ; the number when I 

 first started being fifty, increasing to the present time, 

 when I have in use fifteen hundred sashes. Yet in all that 

 time I have only once got my plants (so exposed) injured, 

 and then only a limited number, Avhich I had neglected to 

 sufficiently harden by airing. 



We have still another use of the sashes to detail. Our 

 Lettuce being cut out by middle of May, we then plant 

 five or six seeds of the Improved White Spine Cucumber, 

 in the centre of each sash. At that season they come up 

 at once, protected by the covering at night. The sashes 

 are left on until the middle of June, when the crop begins 

 to be sold. The management of the Cucumber crop, as 

 regards airing, is hardly different from that of the Lettuce, 

 except in its early stage of growth it requires to be kept 

 warmer; being a tropical plant, it is very impatient of be- 

 ing chilled, but in warm days airing should never be neg- 

 lected, as the concentration of the sun's rays on the glass 

 would raise the temperature to an extent to injure, if not 

 entirely destroy the crop. This third use of the sashes I 

 have never yet made so profitable'as the second, although 

 always sufficiently so to make it well worth the labor. 



There are a few men here who make a profitable busi- 

 ness from the use of sashes only, having no ground except 

 that occupied by the frames. In this way the winter crop 



