CUCUMBER 51 



FRAME CUCUMBERS are the most in demand, and the easiest to 

 grow. The very first point for the cultivator is to determine when to 

 begin, for the rule is to begin too early, and to waste time and 

 opportunity in consequence. We will suppose the Cucumbers are 

 to be grown in a two-light frame, for which will be required four good 

 cart-loads of stable manure. This will require to be put in a heap 

 three weeks before the bed is made up, and the bed will have to last 

 until the season is sufficiently advanced to sustain the heat without 

 any further fermentation. Considering these points, it will be under- 

 stood that it is a far safer proceeding to begin the first week in April 

 than the first week in March, and unless the way is clearly seen, the 

 later date is certainly preferable, for it reduces to a minimum the 

 conflict with time in the matter of bottom heat. Make up the 

 heap ; then, early in March, turn it twice, and at the end of March 

 prepare the bed, firming the stuff with a fork as the work proceeds, 

 but taking care not to tread on the bed. Put on the lights and leave 

 the affair for five or six days, and then lay down a bed of rich loamy 

 soil of a somewhat light and turfy texture, about nine inches deep. 

 It is now optional to sow or plant as may be most convenient. Strong 

 plants in pots, put out at once, will fruit earlier than plants from 

 seeds sown on the bed. But sowing on the bed is good practice 

 for all that, and if this plan is adopted you must sow a few more 

 seeds than the number of plants required, to provide a margin for 

 accidents, and whatever surplus plants you may have will prove 

 useful one way or another, for it is most unusual for Cucumber plants 

 to prove a 'drug in the market.' If it is preferred to begin with 

 plants, the question of providing them must be considered in good 

 time. The seed should be sown at least a month in advance, and 

 should be brought forward on a hot-bed or in a cool part of a stove. 

 Many a successful Cucumber grower has no better means of raising 

 plants than by sowing the seeds in a box or pan of light rich earth, 

 kept in a sunny corner of a common greenhouse, with a slate or tile 

 laid over until the seeds start, and by a little careful management 

 nice thrifty plants are secured in the course of about four weeks. 

 There is very much said in horticultural works on the soil the seeds 

 should be sown in, but we advise the reader not to make too much 

 of that question, for any turfy loam, or even peat, will answer ; but a 

 rank soil is certainly unfit, for the object should be to obtain short 

 stout plants of a healthy green colour, not the long-drawn pallid things 

 that are often to be seen on sale, and which by their evident weak- 

 ness seem destined to illustrate the problems of Cucumber disease. 



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