GREENHOUSE AND HOTHOUSE FLOWERS 147 



heated. To transfer plants from a heated house to an unheated 

 conservatory in severe winter weather would be to ruin them. 



Frames and Pits. We see that a greenhouse, or a glass-house 

 of some description, is a valuable indeed almost an indispensable 

 adjunct, to a conservatory ; let us now add that a frame is an equally 

 useful supplement to a greenhouse. A frame is quite a low struc- 

 ture. The back is only raised above the front sufficiently to carry 

 off the water. It is consequently a structure in which the plants 

 are close to the glass, where they cannot become "drawn." It can 

 be moved about, as occasion requires, from one part of the garden 

 to another. It can be raised on to a hotbed of manure, and so be 

 made to serve as a propagator. One of the greatest conveniences 

 of a frame is that, without the hotbed, it serves as a half-way house 

 for tender plants which are to spend part of their time in the green- 

 house and part in the garden. Chrysanthemums are one popular 

 example, and Tomatoes another. The young plants undergo in 

 the frame the process of what gardeners term " harden ing-off." If 

 transferred direct from a warm house to the open garden (and the 

 temptation to effect such a transference is very strong when the 

 greenhouse is getting crowded and the weather is warm) failure 

 sometimes ensues, because a sudden change of weather subjects 

 them to a strain for which they are not prepared. The frame 

 " tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." A clever gardener will 

 make great use of a frame. He will use it for raising plants late 

 in winter, or for hardening them in spring ; he will perhaps grow 

 Cucumbers or Melons in it in summer ; and he may use it for 

 Violets in autumn and winter. The cost of a frame is not great ; 

 a very nice one can be bought for twenty-five shillings ; and it is 

 only fair to consider that in connection with the cost of the house. 

 If there is a sum of 20 available for glass, it will be better to 

 spend ^15 on a house and ^5 on frames than the whole of the 

 money on a house without frames. 



A pit is a kind of half-way stage between a frame and a green- 



