596 THE HOT-HOUSE. [NOV. 



PRESERVING TENDER BULBS, ETC. 



As some persons who have not the convenience of a hot-house, 

 may be desirous of having some tender exotic bulbous and tuberous- 

 rooted plants, such as crinums, pancratiums, arums, amomum, zinzi- 

 ber, or true ginger, &c., these and such like roots may, in the be- 

 ginning of this month, be taken up and carefully dried as you do 

 tuberoses, and then packed up in very dry sand, or in extremely dry 

 moss, observing to keep them during winter completely out of the 

 reach of frost or moisture. About the beginning or middle of April, 

 you may plant them in pots, which should be plunged in a temperate 

 hot-bed, and give the roots but very little water till they produce 

 foliage, and are growing freely : towards the latter end of May the 

 pots may be placed in the open air, to remain till the latter end of 

 September, when they should be taken in, and placed in the green- 

 house, or in the windows of some warm room till this time ; then to 

 be treated as above. Or, you may keep up the roots till the middle 

 of May, and then plant them even in the open ground ; after which 

 they will grow considerably before autumn, but not flower quite as 

 strong as if properly kept in a hot-house. 



THE HOT-HOUSE. 



It is to be presumed that your tan-pits have been renewed, and all 

 your pots containing pine and other tender plants, duly arranged in 

 the course of the last and preceding month, as then directed ; but 

 should it happen by any disappointment, that this could not have 

 been effected, it ought on no account to be omitted in the first week 

 of this month. 



As the cold weather advances the fires in the stove should be in- 

 creased proportionably, being careful not to overheat the air, lest 

 thereby the plants shoot too freely, which would be a serious injury 

 to them at this season, by rendering them more tender, and conse- 

 quently less able to endure the vicissitudes of the ensuing winter ; 

 besides, the most forward of the pine plants might start to fruit, 

 which would ruin all your expectations ; nor should the air be kept 

 too cold that is, the spirits in the thermometer of Fahrenheit suf- 

 fered to get lower in the night than 52 or 54 degrees, and in the day 

 than 65 or 70, lest the pines become stunted, and many of the 

 curious exotics lose their leaves, and perhaps their extreme parts de- 

 cay for want of that degree of heat so necessary and so congenial to 

 their constitutions. 



Give water occasionally to such plants as want it, in moderate pro- 

 portions, and not too much at a time, for they cannot now discharge 

 it so freely as in summer ; observing that it stands at least twenty- 

 four hours in the stove before you use it, to acquire the same degree 

 of heat as the air of the house. 



