510 CULTIVATION OF THE CUCUMBER IN THE OPEN AIR. 



April in a cucumber or melon bed, and when they come up, they are 

 potted out into small pots, two or three plants in each pot, and are 

 kept properly watered, and stopped at the first or second joint. About 

 the middle of May, a warm situation, where the mould is very rich, 

 is pitched on, and a trench is dug out about two feet deep and three 

 feet broad, and the length is proportioned according to the number of 

 glasses it is intended for. The bottom of this trench is covered with 

 primings of bushes, or coarse vegetable rubbish of any kind, and it is 

 then filled with good warm dung, and when the dung is come to its 

 full heat, it is covered over with eight, ten, or twelve inches deep 

 of rich mould. The glasses are then set upon it about three feet 

 distant from each other, and when the mould gets warm under them, 

 the plants are turned out of the pots with their balls whole, and 

 plunged in the mould under the glasses, and a little water given 

 them to settle the mould about their roots, the glasses set over them, 

 and after they have made roots, and begin to grow, in fine days they 

 are raised a little on one side to let the plants have the free air ; and 

 as the weather gets warmer and warmer, air is given more plentifully, 

 to harden the plants, s,o that they may be able to bear the open air, 

 and run from under the glasses. When the plants begin to fill the 

 glasses, they are trained out horizontally, and the glasses are set upon 

 bricks or such like props, to bear them from the plants. After this 

 the plants require nothing more but to be supplied with water when 

 the summer showers are not sufficient, and to stop them when they 

 become deficient of branches, and thin them of leaves or branches 

 when they are likely to be overcrowded. In warm summers and in 

 warm situations, by this mode of management the plants will bear 

 plentifully for about two months, provided they be not attacked by 

 insects or weakened by diseases. If the situation should require 

 shelter, a row of runner beans four feet from the bed at the north 

 side and ends, and a row of some crop that will not grow more than 

 three feet high, on the south side of the bed, and about the same dis- 

 tance from it, will attain this object. The surface of the ridge, for 

 some time after it is made, should be covered with straw to shoot off 

 the wet, and the leading branches must be pegged to the soil, but not 

 stopped. (Ayres. ) 



Increasing the Atmospheric Heat of the Soil. When cucumbers are 

 grown on the natural ground, as they are extensively at Sandy in 

 Bedfordshire, a considerable portion of heat may be worked into it by 

 artificial means. Thus, when the bed has been marked out, let the 

 soil be dug over in the evening of every sunny day, and then either 

 raked perfectly smooth, or covered with mats or litter ; in this way 

 the radiation of accumulated heat being nightly intercepted, a sufficient 

 quantity of heat will in a week or ten days be collected to raise the 

 temperature 8 or 10 degrees above that of the adjoining soil. (Ayres's 

 ' Treatise,' p. 40.) 



Cucumbers against a South Wall. " Cucumbers will succeed beauti- 

 fully, trained against a south wall, if planted in a little good soil to 

 start them ; afterwards they will flourish in the soil of the border, 



