186 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 1, 



Ans. 1. Vou have a photo and description of one of 

 our greenhouses. 



2. Make the best deep mellow rich soil you can. 



a. Grow your own seed if possible : if not, get from 

 some reliable seedsman ; and don't trust him, for, with 

 the best of intentions, he may be deceived in the seed 

 he buys, or some mistake may be made by some of the 

 clerks. Never trust your crop to untried seeds. Buy 

 sufficient to have a year's supply on hand, and try a 

 little. If it proves true to name, and a good strain, go 

 ahead : and always keep a good supply of tested seed 

 on hand, so that you never have to sow a seed for 

 crop that you do not know positively is all right. We 

 are carrying, at present, 7 lbs., and always mean to 

 have 5 on hand. We speak very feelingly on the suV)- 

 ject, as we got caught once by having ^1.00 worth of 

 Black -seeded Simpson, with a sprinkling of Grand 

 Rapids seed in it, sent us instead of Grand Rapids, as 

 ordered. The con.sequence was, that we had to stand 

 a loss of nearly 1300, and were exceedingly fortunate 

 at that. As ffl. 00 worth of seed will grow a crop that 

 will sometimes sell for 82000, a man is simply reckless 

 who takes any risk he can avoid. 



4. I wonder if you know just how good a thing you 

 gave to the public in your "What to Do'' when you 

 described the Utica lath tomato-box. It is the back- 

 bone, not only of our plant business, vegetables, and 

 annuals, that we sell in the spring, but we use them for 

 all our lettuce, celery, and cabbage plants, etc., for our 

 own business. We use about SOnO of them every year, 

 some of them many times. Many would think them 

 too fussy and notional, to use because ihev do not kno-LV 

 how to use them. 



All our potting earth (rotted sods, mushroom ma- 

 nure, and washed lake sand) is got ready and put in in 

 the .summer after shoveling through a one-inch screen. 

 When wanted for use in winter it is shoveled into a 

 sieve having half-inch mesh, hanging from the roof. 

 The boxes are filled from this, and put, 200 at a time, 

 into a box lined with galvanized iron, and steamed 

 two hours. Whatever may happen afterward, the let- 

 tuce sown in these boxes starts free from disease and 

 insects of any kind, which is quite important, and it is 

 a pleasure to see benches full of boxes or pots, and 

 not a single weed growing in them. Time saved in 

 weeding is as much as time required in steaming. 

 Eight benches stand at the end of one hou.se, each (i>: 

 26 ft., made of cement, with sides three inches deep. 

 In these the boxes are placed, and can all be watered 

 perfectly by flooding the bench. Seedling lettuce, 

 when large enough, are transplanted 32 into a box, 

 and left till large enough to be transplanted into the 

 ground as required. 6x6 inches. Boards a little smaller 

 than the inside of the box, with wire nails driven 

 through them, are used to space the plants correctly, 

 saving a good deal of time and giving each plant its 

 exact space. 



Now, having plants all nicely grown in these boxes, 

 to just dig them out as every one I have seen, outside 

 of our own people, does, simply throws away one of 

 the great advantages of the box ; i. e., having your 

 plants with roots almost undisturbed, and a lot of 

 earth with them. 



Pick the box up, and bump first one end and then 

 the other on the ground ; this loosens up the whole 

 mass of earth. Stand the box on end; place the flat 

 open hand over the top end of the box, and tip half of 

 the earth and plants out into your hand. You can now 

 break each plant with the earth that belongs with it, 

 and disturb it verv little ; the other half of the box can 

 be done in the same wav. A little practice is required 

 to do a nice job quickly. A large box can not be 

 worked in this way. <. 



.5. Sulphur and lime or whiting, a part of the steam- 

 pipes painted once a week with the above, thinned to 

 the proper consi.stency with water, and the tempera- 

 ture J0° to 4.5° at night, and 60° to 70° in the daytime, 

 insures us against mildew ; letting the temperature 

 run too high at night will almost certainly bring trou- 

 ble. Tobacco-stems put through a hay-cutter, scattered 

 freely on the ground, and a quantity burned each 

 week, settles the question of green aphis. 



6. There is no roval road to lettuce-growing. If you 

 do not know your'bu.siness, and attend to it, you will 

 feel it in your pocketbook sooner or later. 



Waterloo, P. Q. Thos. Slack. 



I am greatly pleased to know that you have 

 found that little plant-box a good thing ; and 

 your arrangement for killing both insects and 

 weed seeds by steam heat is exactly what I 

 wanted to know about. In fact, it gives me 

 new enthusiasm in greenhouse work to read 



your description. I have just had a lot of 

 these little boxes made, and find them exceed- 

 ingly handy for seedling coleus and salvia 

 plants when they are put in thumb pots or 

 even two-inch pots. A dozen pots or more 

 can be carried anywhere in one hand. Let 

 any florist show his customers a box of a doz- 

 en seedling coleus-plants, like some we have 

 now, and I am sure they would sell quickly 

 for half a dollar. That would be less than five 

 cents each plant, pot and all. 



Let me explain again to our readers that a 

 single lath, costing but little more than a 

 quarter of a cent, will make the entire box all 

 but the ends. Take a four-foot lath, cut it in- 

 to four equal pieces, then with a thin buzz-saw 

 split each piece edgewise. Now get some ends 

 of half -inch lumber, 3 inches wide and 6 long,, 

 and you will be ready to nail up the boxes. 

 It was originally intended to hold a dozen to- 

 mato-plants ; but all kinds of vegetable-plants 

 can be grown and sold in these boxes. Our 

 Ohio Experiment Station folks have used and. 

 recommended similar boxes for years in con- 

 nection with sub-irrigation in the greenhouse. 

 The boxes of plants are placed in a water- 

 tight bench such as has been described, then 

 water is let in until the ground in each box is 

 properly soaked from below without letting 

 any water touch the leaves of the plant at all, 

 where for any reason it is not deemed advisa- 

 ble. 



A BOX FOR STARTING CUTTINGS TO BE USED 

 IN A WINDOW. 



So many are asking about my forcing-bed,, 

 and whether a similar one could be used for 

 house-plants, I will explain briefly. For forc- 

 ing cuttings, we must not only have a high 

 temperature, say between 70 and 80, but we 

 want the air confined by a pane of glass right 

 over the cuttings, so as to hold in the damp- 

 ness. The air must be moist, and the soil 

 warm. Get a pane of glass any size, the larg- 

 er the better, because you can then have more 

 plants. Find a box to fit it, or make one if 

 necessary. Better have the glass framed and 

 hung on hinges over the box like the cover of 

 a trunk ; then it will be so much handier to 

 open and close. Inside of the box put a pan 

 or earthen dish to hold the moist sand or jadoO' 

 fiber, or, if you choose, a mixture of both. A 

 deep saucer or sauce-dish will answer, but 

 round dishes waste room. I use square deep 

 sauce-dishes. Put in your cutting or slips so 

 that just one or two leaves are out of the wet 

 soil. Raise up your dishes until they are close 

 to the pane of glass. Now your heat should 

 be applied at the bottom. A small lamp may 

 be used. You want the air inside of the box 

 warmer than the air in the room. This will 

 keep moisture standing on the under side of 

 the glass. The cuttings will bear a tempera- 

 ture a great deal lower than 70 ; and even if it 

 sometimes runs up to 90, no harm is done. If 

 it gets too low, of course they do not make as 

 much progress. When the weather is very 

 damp they will need ventilation or they may 

 mold or rot. You will learn to manage this 

 by practice. When the plants get up so as to 

 touch the glass, lower the saucers. 



As an illustration of what such an apparatus. 



