FORCING ASPARAGUS, ETC. 515 



and well-established plants for forcing may be obtained from their 

 runners, the latter being produced so much earlier than they are from 

 plants in the open ground. In the autumn take the plants up with 

 good balls of earth, and plant them in rows in a melon-pit or cold 

 frame, placing them rather thick, to economize the rows, and press the 

 mould firmly to their roots. The pit need have neither bottom-heat 

 nor pipes, but be simply covered with mats. As soon as the frosts 

 set in, place the lights on, but do not begin to cover up with mats 

 before March. If warm showers come in April, take the lights off, 

 and let the plants have the benefit of the showers (which is better 

 than watering from a pot), to forward them. When the sun is 

 shining hot in the afternoon, shut up close, and cover up directly 

 with double mats. These plants will bear abundantly, coming in 

 at a very seasonable time, just before the out-door strawberries, 

 which are very often retarded by late frosts, and after the forced ones 

 are completely exhausted. After the fruit is gathered, the plants are 

 dug up and thrown away, and the pit planted with melons. By fol- 

 lowing this simple routine, year after, or reserving a number of fresh 

 potted plants for this purpose, and also by covering a few rows out of 

 doors with hand-lights, or Rendle's Plant Protectors, the strawberry 

 season may be prolonged and made continuous from first to last at a 

 very trifling expense. 



The Alpine strawberry continues bearing in the open air till it is 

 checked by frost, and if a month previously to this a number of plants 

 have been planted in a bed of soil on heat, or potted and placed in a 

 frame, pit, or strawberry-house, quite near the glass, and a tempera- 

 ture kept up of from 45 to 55 during night, and from 55 to 60 

 during day, the plants will continue bearing during winter ; and they 

 may be succeeded by other plants kept through the winter in cold 

 frames, and put into heat about the middle of February. This mode 

 is very successfully practised in the neighbourhood of Paris ; but 

 Alpine strawberries are seldom thought worthy of forcing, or of so 

 much attention, in England. 



Forcing Asparagus, Sea-kale, Rhubarb, Chicory, and other Roots. 



All these vegetables may be forced where they stand in the open 

 garden, by placing hot dung over them; or when they are planted 

 in rows or beds, by digging out trenches between eighteen inches or 

 two feet wide, and two feet deep, and filling up these trenches with 

 hot dung. Or the plants may be taken up before the forcing season, 

 with as many of the roots as possible, and planted close together in a 

 house, frame, pit, or cellar, or placed in the mushroom-house on a bed 

 of fermenting matter, or of soil heated artificially, at first to 40 or 

 50, and gradually raised to 60, 65, or 70. Nothing can be more 

 simple or easy than this kind of forcing, since it is merely the excite- 

 ment by heat and moisture, without, or with but very little, light and 

 change of air, of the mass of vegetable nutriment laid up in the plant 

 during the previous season. 



LL 2 



