USE AND MANAGEMENT OF COLD FRAMES. 47 



February or the first of March. By this time the weather 

 is always mild enough to allow the sashes to be taken off 

 from the Cabbage and Lettuce plants (if they have been 

 properly hardened), and they are now transferred to the 

 spare frames to cover and forward the Lettuce. Under 

 each sash we plant fifty Lettuce plants, having the ground 

 first well enriched by digging in about three inches of 

 well-rotted manure. The management of the Lettuce 

 for heading is in all respects similar to that used in pre- 

 serving the plants in winter ; the only thing to be at- 

 tended to being to give abundance of air, and on the 

 occasion of rain to remove the sashes entirely, so that 

 the ground may receive a good soaking, which will tend 

 to promote a more rapid and luxuriant growth. 



The crop of Lettuce is fit for market in about six weeks 

 from time of planting, which is always two or three weeks 

 sooner than that from the open ground. The average 

 price for all planted is about $4 per hundred at whole- 

 sale, so that again, with little trouble, our crop gives us 

 $2 per sash in six weeks. 



I believe this second use of the sash is not much prac- 

 ticed outside of this district, most gardeners having the 

 opinion that the winter plants of Cabbage or Lettuce 

 would be injured by their complete exposure to the 

 weather at as early a date as the first of March. In 

 fact, here we have still a few old fogies among us, whose 

 timidity or obstinacy in this matter prevents them 

 from making this double use of their sashes, which there- 

 by causes them an annual loss of $2 per sash, and as some 

 of them have over a thousand sashes the loss is of some 

 magnitude. 



In my own practice I have made my sashes do double 

 duty in this way for fifteen years ; the number when I 

 first started being fifty, increasing until at one time I 

 had 3,000 sashes in use. Yet in all that time I have 

 only once had my plants so exposed injured, and then 



