1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



779 



made anywhere nearly as tight and secure as 

 we make onr greenhouses here in the East. 

 The source of heat is o le of the boiling hot 

 springs, and the house is filled with steam 

 more or less at all seasons of the year, winter 

 and summer. The heat of the spring warms 

 the house sufficiently. Now for the wonder- 

 ful results : 



At the time I was there in August, cucum- 

 bers and tomatoes were the principal crops 

 grown. The owner had evidently given it but 

 little attention, for the beds were not all occu- 

 pied. Although I did not take any measure- 

 ment, I should guess the house was 20 feet 

 wide and 40 or 50 feet long. One single cu- 

 cumbervine occupied a great part of it. He 

 told me this vine had been growing winter 

 and summer for two seasons, and from the 

 looks of it I should say his statement was true. 

 The soil was pretty rich in the beds, made so 

 with something that looked like sheep ma- 

 nure He said he did very little watering, 

 and, in fact, he thought the steam that was all 

 the while making every thing drip would keep 

 things growing without any other irrigation. 

 There were green and ripe tomatoes at the 

 time, and lots of cucumbers setting, but none 

 quite large enough for the table. These were 

 picked as fast as they became of suitable size 

 for the big hotel close by. I happened to look 

 down under the bench, however, among the 

 vines, where a very fine cucumber had grown 

 unobserved. My good friend very kindly pre- 

 sented this to me as a reward for my careful 

 scrutiny. 



This large cucumber-vine did not seem to be 

 all growing thriftily ; hut new bright green 

 thrifty shoots were starting out here and there, 

 blossoming and bearing cucumbers. One thing 

 that surprised me was that neither in Florida, 

 California, nor in Bermuda did I find a cucum- 

 ber-vine that had gown continuously as this 

 one had. Will some of the friends in these 

 tropical climates inform me whether it is usu- 

 al to find cucumber-vines more than one year 

 old bearing continuously? 



Now, here is the astounding part of my sto- 

 ry : Nobody stays in Yellowstone Park over 

 winter ; but a government official, in making 

 explorations on snowshoes, came to this green- 

 house in the depth of winter, and found cu- 

 cumVjers of all sizes — a great abundance of 

 them — growing quite luxuriantly. Notwith- 

 standing there are openings in mau)^ places 

 where I think a cat might jump through, the 

 hot springs under the bench where the cucum- 

 ber-vine grows had furnished heat and steam 

 enough to crowd the cold out. When shut up 

 for winter I suppose the steam would be forc- 

 ing its way out of all the crevices so as to keep 

 the terrible — not zero weather, but weather 

 away down below zero — out. From the looks 

 of the vine I feel sure it has been growing, 

 certainly all the past winter, in the way m}' 

 informant describes. Now, this being true, 

 why in the world is not the house so hot dur- 

 ing July and August as to kill every thing? 

 Well, to tell the truth, I can not answer. 

 There is no ventilation at all in the roof. The 

 only ventilation is through a small window in 

 one gable end, and a good-sized door in the 



opposite end, and the slope of the roof is, I 

 think, toward the northeast. I presume all 

 plants will thrive as well as tomatoes and cu- 

 cumbers. Grand Rapids lettuce was doing 

 tolerably well. Very likely the moisture and 

 heat combined would produce too rank a 

 growth for man}' vegetables to bear fruit prop- 

 erly. Of course, this locality would not be 

 the place to grow crops in winter for our large 

 cities, for it is almost a hundred miles from 

 any railroad station ; but as there are hot 

 springs scattered through Idaho, Wyoming, 

 and Montana, I think there is a wonderful 

 opening for somebod}' who will find and buy 

 one of these springs near a railway station. 

 In fact, I was told a movement was already on 

 foot for such an enterprise. When I first vis- 

 ited California I continually protested because 

 nobody was making use of this kind of heat 

 for growing tropical plants. At San Jacinto, 

 Cal., a hotel sanitarium was running hot wa- 

 ter long distances through pipes, to cool it off 

 so they could use it for drinking and other 

 purposes. At the same time, this hotel was 

 paying tremendous prices for firewood to heat 

 their stoi'cs in winter. The hot water that 

 they cooled off outdoors could have been con- 

 ducted through their hotel almost as cheaply 

 as where I found it. 



In some of the European countries, I under- 

 stand, they are using hot springs for growing 

 beautiful pineapples. Why can not somebody 

 do the same thing in ovir Western States? 

 Can anybody tell me how much progress has 

 been made along this line ? If such a work is 

 not " High - pressure Gardening" in very 

 truth, then I do not know where you will find 

 it. You may be aware that I have been u'.ing 

 exhaust steam for these many years past in a 

 similar enterprise. But one great trouble has 

 been that my stuff would get too hot ; and 

 during our zero weather my strawberries would 

 be, figuratively, cooked on one side and frozen 

 on the other ; and yet this greenhouse that I 

 have described seems to have gotten around 

 all of this trouble. I could not dispute it, for 

 there was that gigantic cucumber-vine. I 

 suppose many of our readers have read of the 

 success recently obtained by the Missouri Ag- 

 ricultural Station in forcing rhubarb in the 

 open ground bj' running steam between the 

 plants, say once or twice a day during severe 

 weather. This warms the ground to such an 

 extent that stalks were forced fit for market, 

 in the open air, without any covering except 

 coarse manure.* 



*A full report of this will be found in the Market 

 Garden for June, 1898. Address Market Garden Co., 

 Minneapolis, Minn. The plan has been worked suc- 

 cessfully for two winters by J. E. Whitten, horticultu- 

 rist, Columbia, Mo. 



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