GARDENING UNDER GLASS 357 



needed, and protect carefully with mats in cold nights, cutting the asparagus 

 as fast as the shoots attain the proper size until shoots appear on the outdoor 

 crop, when the cutting should be stopped to give the frame-roots a chance to 

 fully develop. The following season they can be cut longer, and if the ma- 

 nuring and fertilization is kept up the beds will continue productive for many 

 years. In the colder sections North the same practice can be pursued with 

 heated houses or frames. At Cornell University Prof. Bailey describes a 

 house used for the forcing of asparagus, which is simply made of canvas 

 stretched over an iron frame which forms the heating pipes. With the simple 

 frame and sash the Southern gardener can get the crop from the frames 

 during February, when the price is always fine, and as a second use of the 

 sash for the winter it may prove more profitable than a second crop of lettuce. 



STRAWBERRIES IN FRAMES. 



It is a comparatively easy matter, from Central North Carolina to South- 

 ern Georgia, to forward the strawberry crop with the use of sashes so that the 

 fruit will compete with that from Florida in February and early March. 

 In preparation for the crop we must begin in the early summer of the previous 

 year. Using an early variety of strawberry, we take the runners as soon as 

 they show white roots an inch long and put them in three-inch pots, using the 

 same rich compost of rotted sods and manure we would use for the roses or 

 other plants in pots. They are then set, close together, in a frame on a bed 

 of coal ashes, are shaded by lath screens and kept carefully watered till the 

 roots have gotten complete possession of the pots. They are then set in the 

 frames in August, ten inches apart each way. The soil in the frame is made 

 as deep and rich as we make it for the lettuce crop, and the plants are kept 

 clean and not allowed to make any runners. By the time cold weather arrives 

 they will be big and strong and will have made fine fruiting crowns. They 

 must now be allowed to take their winter rest, for it will not do to excite them 

 into continued growth and bloom. About Christmas the sashes are placed 

 over them, the old leaves cleaned away, and a light dressing of nitrate of soda 

 is added around them; about four ounces to a sash. Close attention must 

 now be paid to watering so that the plants shall never suffer from drought, 

 and to airing on all occasions when the sun shines brightly, and covering to 

 exclude frost on cold nights. As the plants develop fresh leaves and begin 

 to bloom, but not before, it is well to add a mulch of chopped straw around 

 them for the fruit to rest upon and be kept clean. The crop should come on 

 in late February and early March. For frame culture, as for regular forcing 

 in greenhouses, we would grow fresh plants annually. If well grown thus, in 



