94 MARKET GARDESTXG. 



above the surface bank up all around with the excavated 

 earth. The pit is now ready for the reception of potted 

 plants of primulas, pelargoniums, violets, wall flowers, 

 begonias, heliotropes, fuchsias, abutilons, lilies or roses, 

 the tallest plant being placed on the back, where the 

 elevation is three and one-half feet. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



Market Gardening Under Glass. 



So many and so radical have been the changes in 

 modern commercial gardening during the last twenty- 

 five years that a practical market gardener, of a quarter 

 of a century ago, who, like Rip Van Winkle, should have 

 taken a sleep from 1870 until the present, on awaking, 

 woukl find that his profession, as he understood it, had 

 passed away, his old-fashioned and pet methods having 

 been so altered that he would neither recognize nor under- 

 stand the ways and means in practice by his scientific 

 successors. Similar improved methods and appliances 

 run through every branch of horticulture, but there is 

 no branch where there have been more innovations made 

 than in that of forcing vegetables under glass. These 

 various changes in modes of culture are the result of a 

 rapidly increasing demand in large cities and towns in 

 the north and west for lettuce, radishes, cucumbers and 

 other esculents for winter and early spring use. To 

 meet this constant, ever-broadening and profitable branch 

 of gardening, new and improved systems had to be de- 

 veloped. As long as the art of gardening has been prac- 

 ticed,, both for private advantage and, in a limited ex- 

 tent, for commercial purposes, forcing certain vegeta- 

 bles in winter has been customarv, but the old methods, 



