150 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



opening the liglits to let the damp exhale, keep a place 

 tolerably dry ; but when we have, as often happens for a long 

 time together, wet and cloudy weather, and hardly any sun, 

 we can only shut it out ; even this must be carefully done, 

 for if plants are shut up too much, they will be forced into 

 growth, and that will cause them to be drawn. Nothing is 

 more conducive to health than plenty of room ; half the 

 j)lants that are spoiled in a greenhouse, more than half of the 

 long-legged, ugly, uncouth specimens that we see about, are 

 the result of over-crowding. It causes the leaves to fall from 

 the lower jDart of the plants, the under branches to decay, 

 and the tops to draw up into an ungainly form ; and it is 

 not easy to recover a specimen that has once gone "WTong in 

 this direction. Avoid over-crowding them above all things ; 

 rather throve half the plants away, and take care of the rest, 

 than, by cramming too many into a place, spoil all. When it 

 is done, and the forms of the plants destroyed, the only way 

 to recover them is to cut them down very close for the chance 

 of their breaking out at the bottom, or to cut off the side 

 branches, and see if they can be made into well-formed 

 standards ; but it is only a few kinds of j)lants that make 

 good standards, and we should not be tempted to try the 

 experiment "with subjects that will not form good heads. 

 Sometimes, in spite of all our efforts, the frost will lay hold 

 of plants ; when this is the case, syringe them well all over 

 the foliage, and cover them up close, so that the sun shall on 

 no account reach thenu In most cases this will thaw them 

 gently and save them, and nothing else can. We have seen 

 a whole pit full of heaths frozen through leaving off the 

 covering, and hanging their j'oung shoots down as if they 

 wanted water. They have been syringed all over their 

 foliage, the lights all closed and closely matted up till the 

 next day, and have been perfectly recovered. Now, although 

 the frost would not have kiUed them, every shoot would have 

 been lost, if they had been thawed by the sun, or the warm 

 wind. We have seen a bed of tulips that have been frosted 

 not long before they bloomed, and every stalk was doubled 

 over, and the buds hung down ; we have seen them syringed 

 in the same way, and matted up close, and the next day they 

 appeared none the worse for the freezing. We might mention 

 twenty other instances of the efficacy of syringing or watering 

 frozen plants all over the foUage, and covering up close from 



