144 WHYTOCK—THE CULTIVATION OF 
same way as for planting out; get them as soon as possible into 
10-inch pots, and grow them as strong as ever I could in these 
the first year without any bottom heat, and in the autumn ripen 
thoroughly. The following year, in March, I should reduce the 
balls, slightly loosening all the roots round the ball, and pot 
them in 12-inch pots in good fibry loam mixed with bone-meal 
and an artificial manure; grow them on as strong as I could, 
giving occasionally manure-water, and at the end of summer 
ripen well again. These plants ought now to be good fruiting 
canes, and fit for starting for early forcing. 
The early forcing of pot-vines requires and is worth a special 
house. The best form of house is a lean-to, not very wide, say 
ten feet, with a brick-built pit three-and-a-half or four feet wide 
and the same in depth running along the front of the house. 
This pit should be filled with leaves, and a little stable-litter should 
be added to it, and thus a moist bottom heat is secured. . The 
fruiting pot-vines should be plunged in this about the middle of 
November. Care must be taken that the bottom heat is not 
above 80°. The heat of this bed without any fire-heat will start 
the vines. When they have grown to show flower, the mean 
temperature may be 60° to 65° during the day, 10° higher at 
this sunless short-day period ; it is pretty well a matter of fire- 
heat all through. It will be a great help to the vines if the air of 
the house can be changed during a short time each day. By 
the time the grapes are colouring it will be April, when the 
weather will admit of sufficient airing, so essential to the colour- 
ing and ripening of grapes. Black Hamboro is really the best 
and only grape for early forcing. Foster’s Seedling is a good 
early white grape. 
The house in which vines have been forced may for the 
summer and autumn be used as a melon and cucumber house, 
and the back wall devoted to tomato growing. Two or three 
shelves on the back wall may, when the vines are in it, be 
devoted to forcing strawberries. 
For the early forcing of planted-out vines, the vines must be 
of some age and well-established, and indeed gradually brought 
up to it. Ifyou force young vines, for instance plants that have 
been out say three or four years, you get a crop and destroy 
them for fruitfulness for ever after. In the early forcing of vines 
