GREENHOUSE STRUCTURES. 91 



any price from the overcrowded tables of the florists in 

 May. The care of such plants in the greenhouse is very 

 simple. The board benches or tables, E and G, should be 

 covered with two inches of sand, upon which to stand the 

 pots ; place them so far apart that the leaves will not 

 touch ; water thoroughly whenever the surface of the soil 

 in the pot appears dry, which will be every day in hot 

 weather. Ventilate by letting down the sashes, more or 

 less, as the day is warm or cold, whenever the thermom- 

 eter indicates seventy-five or eighty degrees ; in other 

 words, keep the temperature in the day-time as near as 

 may be to sixty or sixty-five degrees, as marked by a ther- 

 mometer in the greenhouse where the sun will not strike 

 it. Burn half a pound of damp tobacco stems on the 

 floor of the greenhouse twice a week, to destroy the aphis. 

 One dealer in Maine informed me, that from a greenhouse 

 so constructed, thirty feet long by eleven feet wide, placed 

 against the south side of a high board fence, he sold in 

 six weeks, sufficient bedding-plants that he had purchased, 

 and vegetable plants that he had raised from seed, to af- 

 ford him a profit of $200, or nearly double the cost of his 

 greenhouse. 



A greenhouse attached to a dwelling, instead of being 

 covered with glass, may be covered by stretching the 

 'protecting cloth" already alluded to over the rafters, 

 which would give light enough and give sufficient pro- 

 tection to any kind of plants by May 1st. A greenhouse 

 twenty-five feet by eleven, so covered, could be built for 

 $50, attached to a wall or dwelling, and plants would do 

 quite as well in it in May or June, as if covered by glass ; 

 no ventilation is needed when the protecting cloth is 

 used. There are now hundreds beginning the florist's bus- 

 iness, by buying a few plants to sell in spring, that would 

 find their profits doubled by the use of this very cheap 

 style of a greenhouse ; the covering by the protecting 

 cloth would cost only about one-tenth that of the glass 



