AMERICAN HOME GARDEN. 355 



GRAPE-HOUSE. 



If a proper grapery is desired, its construction and manage- 

 Fig 220 ment may be learned 



from any of the numer- 

 ous elaborate treatises 

 upon grape culture. But 

 any one may construct a 

 cheap cold grapery, as 

 shown in the figure, in 

 which foreign grapes, or 

 the more tender of our 

 own native kinds may be produced. 



For this purpose, choose a spot facing as near south as pos- 

 sible ; if against a building or a bank wall, so much the better. 

 Trench the spot so chosen, and ten feet beyond where the front 

 of your house will come, to a depth of two feet or more, enrich- 

 ing it as you proceed with the various manures named p. 349. 

 If the subsoil is at all moist, throw into the bottom of each 

 trench, as you make it, loose stones, brick-bats, lime rubbish, 

 old boots and shoes, brush, &c., &c. 



When this is finished and the ground settled, lay out your 

 house twelve feet wide, with the front two to four feet high and 

 the back twelve. Having set posts for the whole, board all 

 tight on both sides of the posts, as is usual in constructing ice- 

 houses, leaving only an end door-way, and small openings for 

 ventilators along just below the front and back plates, to be 

 closed either with hinged or sliding wooden or glass doors. 

 As you proceed with the boarding, fill in all between the posts 

 with sawdust, or dry tan, or swamp hay, or straw and charcoal 

 dust, or dried peat, or swamp-muck, pretty well packed down. 



Having all smooth and ready, lay on your plates and arrange 

 the rafters, which will be something over fifteen feet long, and 

 may be three feet apart in the clear. This will require sashes 

 three feet wide, each having five rows of six-inch glass, or six 

 rows of five-inch. These sashes will rest, and may either be 

 fixed, or slide upon cleats nailed against the rafters, the front 

 plate being beveled so that the lower sashes will slide from 

 their cleats evenly over it, if desired. 



