408 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



BENEFITS OF SHADE. 



There are times, during the extremely hot 

 months of the year, when shade in the middle- 

 of the day is, without doubt, a benefit. Of 

 course, we can not shade ordinary farm crops 

 — that is, not in the same way we would pro- 

 vide shade for plant-beds or for limited areas 

 where the crop is very valuable. For two sea- 

 sons we have lost our Columbus gooseberries 

 because they were literally cooked or baked 

 by the hot sun at just about the time they 

 were ripening. A baked apple is a very good 

 thing ; but a baked gooseberry — that is, one 

 baked by the sun before it is fully ripe — is not 

 particularly "to be desired." While in Flor- 

 ida I studied the shaded gardens round among 

 the tall palm and palmetto trees ; and since so 

 much interest has been manifested in ginseng, 

 our people here in the North are making their 

 beds out in the woods ; but to do this we must 

 make a trench clear around our plant-beds, 

 every year cutting off the roots of the forest- 

 trees that intrude. If you try growing gar- 

 den stuff by making the ground very rich 

 near any fair-sized tree, you will soon find 

 that trees of any kind know " a good thing " 

 when they find it. A market-gardener who 

 realized the advantage of shade for celery- 

 plants (just as we do) made his bed in the 

 shade of some early cherries. The trees had 

 never amounted to very much before ; but 

 with the rich soil and constant watering he 

 not only had an enormous crop of cherries, 

 but the cherries themselves were enormous. 

 Lots of water and rich potting soil will make 

 any fruit-trees do wonders. You may remem- 

 ber I mentioned about my neighbor Mr. 

 Green, who had a mulberry-tree standing 

 close to a little fountain in the midst of a 

 flower-bed. The mulberries were so large I 

 wanted a graft from that tree, and the tree 

 kept growing berries right straight along dur- 

 ing the whole summer season. He put in 

 good drainage for the overflow of his fountain, 

 and the ground was kept pretty well soaked 

 all summer long. But it is expensive business 

 to keep up both water and fertility. May be, 

 with the cherry-trees it would pay, and they 

 would give you just the right kind of shade. 

 The above is to remind you of what you may 

 expect if you use grozvi ft g- trees for shade. 



Friend Slack, in criticising my flat- roof 

 greenhouse, hinted at the effect of the hot 

 sun, not only in June and July, but even ear- 

 lier. Well, this season, even when we were 

 having a severe frost every night, the sun was 

 so hot in the middle of the day that it just 

 scorched and roasted things. I began to won- 

 der why I could not grow plants during the 

 latter part of April as successfully as I did in 

 December and January. Well, I decided that it 

 was largely owing to the fierce sun at noonday. 

 After I made some cloth curtains to roll up, 

 supported on rods just below the glass, there 

 was a marked improvement. It is some work 



to roll up and unroll six curtains once and 

 sometimes twice every day ; but it just makes 

 the "posies" smile, and the tomato - plants 

 and cabbage-plants also. For instance, when 

 you take a lot of plants out of the seed-bed 

 and put them into a larger bed in the green- 

 house, the sun must be kept off until they 

 have got started enough to stand alone. A 

 curtain comes in very nicely, and especially 

 where we have six curtains, for then we can 

 shade any particular bed or half a bed, letting 

 the sun shine on all the others. Some plants 

 will stand the sun — colei for instance — when 

 they get well rooted ; but others, like the be- 

 gonia, will show scorched leaves around the 

 edges, and finally die outright if you do not 

 give them a shady place in the middle of the 

 day. Just group j'our plants together that are 

 to be grown in the shade, then you can man- 

 age nicely.* 



In the open air we have been in the habit of 

 shading plants with cotton cloth ; but some- 

 times you want a shade when you do not want 

 a confined atmosphere. And then, again, sup- 

 pose a summer shower comes up, and you are 

 not just on the spot. Your cotton cloth should 

 be out of the way as soon as the first raindrop 

 falls ; and if the sun comes out again, with 

 fierce heat, in a short time you will want your 

 cloth rolled back. In order to avoid so much 

 manipulation, the people who grow ginseng 

 have a slatted roof over the beds, such as I 

 told you about, that are in use in Florida and 

 California, where they not only cover an acre, 

 but gardens of many acres, with a slatted roof. 

 This same slatted roof protects orange-groves 

 from the frost. Well, for small gardeners the 

 ginseng book describes and recommends a lath 

 screen. Take common plasterer's lath, placed 

 an inch apart, then nail a lath across the ends ; 

 and in order to make the thing stiff and sub- 

 stantial, put a third lath through the middle. 

 Weave this middle lath in and out, basket 

 fashion. The ginseng book recommends beds 

 4 feet wide ; but as the standard width for 

 market-gardening is 6 feet, I would have these 

 slatted shutters made the whole dimensions as 

 our hot-bed sash — 6 feet long by Z)A, feet wide. 

 Then they can be used interchangeably. Nail 

 your laths together with nails that will clinch ; 

 and to make them more substantial, sometimes 

 a brace is put on diagonally. These slatted 

 frames will let enough rain through to answer 

 almost as well as if they were off entirely ; and 

 they never need to be taken off the plants un- 

 less you want to gather a crop or work among 

 the plants. The author of the book on gin- 



* These cloth curtains just under the glass are also 

 a great protection against frost, and I think they 

 might be so managed as to save a large amount of 

 fuel in severe weather. We had a spell of weather in 

 April when we found it profitable to cut off the sun 

 along in the middle of the day. About three o'clock 

 the curtains could be rolled back so as to give the 

 plants sunshine until daylight disappeared, then the 

 same curtains were unrolled again to keep the tem- 

 perature of the greenhouse from going too low during 

 the night. As soon as the sun began to peep through 

 the glass next morning they were rolled up until the 

 rays began to be too strong, and so on. This is some 

 work ; but is it not less work than to fire up and warm 

 with hot water or steam-pipes? If you whitewash the 

 glas= you can't have the sun during cool weather and 

 cloudy days, oftentimes when it is very much needed. 



