322 Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. 



Art. II. Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. 



Vol. IV. Part II. 



(Continued from p. 187.) 



63. On heating Hot-houses by Steam. By the Rev. James Armi- 

 tage Rhodes, Horsforth Hall, near Leeds, Sept. 22. 1825. Read 

 Dec. 7. 1826. 



This paper, modified a little, appeared in this Magazine 

 (Vol. IV. p. 330.). 



64. Account of a Mode of training Vines on the Outside of the 

 alternate Sashes of a Hot-house, by xvhich means excellent Grapes 

 •were produced. Bv James Macdonald, Dalkeith Park. Read 

 Dec. 7. 1826, and Jan. 4. 1827. 



These grapes are from vines which were trained over the 

 sashes of a glazed hot-house j they were well swelled, and of 

 the richest flavour, the summer and autumn of 1 826 having 

 been peculiarly favourable for ripening fruits. 



The vines had been " planted about fifteen years, outside of a small 

 stove for the cultivation of tropical plants. The vines have generally been 

 brought into the stove every spring, and trained up to the rafters to pro- 

 duce their fruit ; and in the autumn, when the fruit was matured and cut, 

 the vines were turned out to the open air to winter. 



" But for these two or three years past, in the spring, when the vines 

 were introduced into the house for a crop, I left some of the short wood 

 on the vines outside in the open air ; and I found that they matured their 

 fruit every year, equal, both as to size and quality, to those within the 

 house. This year (1826), all the rafters in the stove being covered with 

 choice ornamental creepers, I was induced to make a trial of my whole 

 vines in the open air outside. Accordingly, in the spring, when the buds 

 began to swell, I laid the whole vines down on the ground ; and, to preserve 

 them from the spring frosts, I covered them over with mats and spruce fir 

 boughs, till the end of May. I then trained all the shortest vines on the 

 front ashlar wall [a wall made of freestone as it comes from the quarry], 

 which is about 2ift. high, filling in as many as it could contain. I then 

 took the longer shoots, and trained them up the front upright rafters, 

 keeping the upright front glass clear. I next procured some very thin 

 laths, and tacked them on each alternate fixed light on the sloping roof, so 

 as not- to prevent the running lights from giving the usual air for the house 

 and plants. We tied the vines to the laths as we went along. They 

 remained in this state till the end of August; when I found that those 

 vines on the sloping glass were not making such progress as those on the 

 front ashlar building, or on the front upright rafters, the fruit not swelling 

 equally well. With a view to remedy this, I and one of my young men 

 got a few blocks of wood, 5 in. high and 1J in. in width, and nailed them 

 upright on the centre of the long rafter, 2 ft. 3 in. apart, on each alternate 

 light ; we got long laths, and stretched them along these blocks, in the direc- 

 tion and according to the slope of the sashes, nailing the laths to the blocks. 

 Then we began at the bottom of the light, and got some small laths to 

 reach across the light ; we nailed our stretchers on the top of the laths, 

 and then lifted up the vines and grapes on the top cross-stretchers, tying 

 and regulating them as we proceeded. The cross laths are placed about 

 18 in. asunder : thus placing them about 7 in. above the rafter, and about 

 10 in. above the glass. This finished the operation. 



