70 PRACTICAL FLOUICULTUKE. 



the 15th of March. By attention to ventilating and water- 

 ing, fine plants may be had in five or six weeks from time 

 of sowing, which will bring them just into the proper 

 season for planting in open ground. Tomatoes, pepper, and 

 egg-plant, and the tenderer kinds of flower seeds, should 

 not be sown much sooner than the end of April. True, 

 they would not be as early as if sown a month sooner in a 

 hot-bed, and replanted into the green-house bench in May. 

 But if no hot-bed is at hand, the protection of the green- 

 house over these tender plants in May will give satisfac- 

 tory results if earliness is not particularly wanted. 



I have so many inquiries about the heating and general 

 construction of cheap green-houses that I am compelled to 

 give instructions which are known now to nearly every 

 one in and around our large cities. Yet, simple though 

 the matter may be to us who see so much of it, it is evi- 

 dently perplexing enough, when they come to construct, 

 for those who have nothing to copy from. Those of us 

 who write on such subjects too often take for granted 

 that those for whom we write know something about the 

 matter, when for the most part they really know nothing. 



The cheapest kind of construction is the lean-to just 

 described, that is, where there is anything to lean it 

 against, such as the gable of house or barn. But if the 

 green-house has to be constructed entirely new, I think the 

 span-roof is best see end-section fig. 13, p. 57. The walls 

 are four feet high, formed of locust or cedar posts, and 

 made with tarred paper between the boarding and weath- 

 er-boarding as described on page 67. This makes really a 

 better wall for green-house purposes than an 8-inch one of 

 brick, as we find that the extremes of temperature of the 

 green-house inside at 50, and perhaps 10 below zero out- 

 side very soon destroy an 8-inch solid brick wall, particu- 

 larly if exposed to the north or west. A wall of wood con- 

 structed as above will last for twenty years, and be as 

 good a protection as one of 8-inch brick. So much for 



