212 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 



the sun gets well up, your boxes will dry 

 out every day, so as to need watering every 

 night. If you ever had charge of a hundred 

 thousand plants in boxes you know some- 

 thing about the labor of watering. Well, 

 these beds of earth, when well soaked with 

 water, will keep wet enough to grow well 

 for a long while. In fact, our annex is 

 a rather damp place when we have many 

 cloudy days without sunshine. To avoid 

 dampness and wet, the ground should be 

 most thoroughly underdiained before your 

 house is builded. IIow about the heating 

 arrangements V do you askV Well, so far 

 we have not had any heating arrangements 

 at all, except that, through the middle of 

 our annex, passes a steam-pipe about a foot 

 below the bottom of the paths. This pipe 

 goes ovt-r to our dwelling-house, and hap- 

 liened to be just under our plant-house. 

 There is one other means of keeping the 

 temperature from freezing. This annex ad- 

 joins our factory basement, and three win- 

 dows open from the basement into the an- 

 nex. These windows have been open all 

 winter long. The large bulk of air in the 

 basement, by changing constantly with that 

 in the annex, keeps the temperature of this 

 glass structure constantly above freezing. 

 At least, there has not been frost enough to 

 injure any of the plants. During December 

 and January, things did not grow very 

 much, as a matter of course ; but the sunny 

 days of February gave us the finest growth 

 of vegetables that I ever saw anywhere. 

 Tiiese same windows that connect the air 

 \\\l\\ the basement also prevent any bad ef- 

 fect from overheating. We have grown 

 beautiful lettuce, radishes, beets, etc., on 

 these beds ; but the house seems specially 

 adapted to celery. Celery-plants grow right 

 along, even if there is not very much sun ; 

 and plants that failed to amount to any 

 thing on account of the drought last season, 

 were gathered just before hard freezing, 

 and placed in this annex. They were put 

 almost as close together as they would 

 stand ; and as they grew, earth was banked 

 around them so as to raise the surface a foot 

 or moie higher than the ordinary surface of 

 the bed. They bleached out beautifully ; 

 and now when there is no celery to be had 

 anywhere else, we are getting 40 cents a 

 pound for our greenhouse celery. 



The plant-tube shown in Chapter XUI. 

 is a great help in banking up the celery in 

 the greenhouse. Slip them over the plants, 

 and then with a little tire-shovel sift the 

 earth between the tubes, raising the tubes 



as fast as the plants grow, and sifting in 

 more dirt. Now, such a house as I have de- 

 scribed costs but a little more than ordina- 

 ry cold frames, and yet you have no hand- 

 ling of sash at all, and you can work with 

 comfort among your plants when the weath- 

 er would be such that you could do nothing 

 at all outdoors. 



If it should be desired to have artificial 

 heat by means of steam-pipes or hot water 

 I would suggest running the pipes above the 

 center of the beds along under the sash. 

 The asparagus-house I have already alluded 

 to w^as warmed by stove-pipes running quite 

 a long distance under the glass in this way. 

 With steam we can arrange the pipes in 

 such a way that they will not cross the 

 paths overhead at all ; and this is desirable, 

 to avoid bumping one's head. When it is 

 necessary to cross a path, take the steam- 

 pipe down under the path. The question 

 tlien arises. Does this answer as well as 

 bottom heat ? The heat of the sun is al- 

 ways from overhead ; and a writer in the 

 American Florist has recently stated that 

 he has obtained good results from steam- 

 pipes running overhead, fie says the plants 

 turn so as to face the steam-pipe, just as 

 they face the sun. The objection may be 

 made, that this arrangement does not bring 

 the plants as near to the glass as where 



I they are on benches, say three feet high. 

 To which I reply, that plants that naust be so 

 close up to the sash can be put on beds run- 

 ning near to the eaves. The linest lettuce- 



; house I saw at I' tica had one of the central 

 beds clear down on the ground ; in fact, it 



' was a bed of ground such as I have describ- 

 ed, and not a bench at all. Well, the let- 

 tuce on this bed was ahead of any of the 

 rest ; and the boy who showed us through 

 said they always got the best lettuce from 

 this bed. It had no bottom heat, for there 

 was no space under it at all— just solid earth. 

 The question is often asked, " Can not the 

 new plant-bed muslin be used, instead of 

 expensive glassV " It can, when the weath- 

 er gets to be warm enough — say in our lo- 

 cality about the first of April ; but it does 

 not answer at all at any time of the year 

 when you are liable to have heavy snows. 

 The weight of the snow will tear the cloth ; 

 besides, cloth will not give nearly as much 

 sunshine as glass ; and during windy weath- 

 er it will flop up and down like a bellows, 

 pumping the outside air out and in continu- 

 ally. It is, however, an excellent thing to 

 shade yoimg plants just as they set out. If 

 your plant-bed, however, is adjoining the 



