49° 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 190. 



above the rim the pot is tilled, which gives more root- 

 space and saves transplanting. When these pots are filled 

 with roots the plants are set in the beds, and then follows the 

 critical time in Cucumber-forcing. The young plants are sub- 

 ject to attacks of aphis and fungi, and any failure in bottom- 

 heat will check them. Few vegetables require such careful 

 attention until they are well established. The aphis must be 

 kept off, or the plants will be ruined in a few days. If the plant 

 is once stunted it will make a short bunchy growth at the top 

 and the leaves will be small and yellow, and it may remain 

 stationary for weeks, and even if it finally resumes growth it 

 rarely becomes a profitable plant. To ensure a good stand 

 three or four times as many plants as are needed should 

 be started with the most vigorous ones set out a foot or a 

 foot and a half apart. When they are established the weaker 

 ones are destroyed, leaving the remaining individuals from 

 two and a half to three feet apart. So long as the growing 

 portions of the plant are vigorous, and the leaves are not 

 mildewed, the plant may be considered in good condition, 

 although the lower leaves fall off, giving it a scraggy appear- 

 ance. 



When there is room above the benches the plants are trained 

 upon a perpendicular trellis of annealed wire, but on low 

 benches they are trained along the roof. The vines are tied 

 upon the wires with raffia or soft cord ; two or three strong 

 main branches are trained out and only enough side shoots 

 are allowed to grow to cover the trellis, the remaining ones 

 being pinched out as soon as they appear. The plants should 

 not be overcrowded with young growth, and some of the large 

 leaves may be taken off in the dark days of midwinter if the 

 foliage is dense. The branches are all headed in as soon as 

 they reach the top of the trellis or encroach upon the space 

 allowed for neighboring plants. The two chief causes of fail- 

 ure are, insufficient bottom-heat and impatience for quicker 

 results. Earliness is not a characteristic of the English Cucum- 

 ber ; from eighty to a hundred days elapse after the sowing 

 of seed before the fruit is fit for the table, and from a month 

 to six weeks is needed for the fruit to attain salable size after 

 the flower has set. The plants continue to bear from three to 

 four months under the best treatment, and each plant ought to 

 yield at least eight good fruits. If they are pinched in, after 

 the English custom, and allowed to bear but two or three fruits, 

 the season can be extended, but it is probably more profitable 

 to secure returns more quickly. The heavy fruits should not 

 be allowed to pull the vines from their support, and those 

 which do not hang free should be held up in slings, for if al- 

 lowed to lie on the soil they do not color evenly. 



Cucumbers are monoecious — that is, the sexes are in sepa- 

 rate flowers on the same plant. The staminate flowers are the 

 more numerous, and they begin to appear earlier, so that a 

 sufficient supply of pollen is assured. Out-of-doors the pollen 

 is carried to the pistillate flowers by insects, but these are ab- 

 sent from the greenhouse, and if the flowers are fertilized the 

 pollen must be carried by hand. There is a question, how- 

 ever, whether pollination is advisable in the house, for it is 

 certain that the English Cucumber will grow to perfection 

 without the aid of pollen and without seeds. Many gardeners 

 suppose that pollen causes the fruit to grow large and lumpy 

 at the blossom end, where alone the seed forms, and they, 

 therefore, aim to produce seedless Cucumbers in order to pro- 

 cure straighter and more shapely fruits. Professor Bailey is 

 not able to make definite statements on these questions, 

 although he has experimented on them for two winters. In 

 his experience it has paid to pollinate by hand if early fruits are 

 desired. The early flowers nearly always fail to set freely with 

 no pollen. The method of pollination is to pick a staminate 

 flower, strip off the corolla and insert the column of anthers 

 into the pistillate flowers. Fruits which have set without pol- 

 lination are uniformly seedless throughout, the walls of the 

 ovules remaining loose and empty. To prevent misshapen 

 fruits English gardeners often grow them in glass tubes, but 

 the swollen end is not always caused by seed-bearing, and pol- 

 lination on one side does not destroy the symmetry of the 

 fruit as it does in tomatoes, for example. There appears to be 

 a peculiarity in individual plants in this respect, and upon some 

 individuals, where the fruits were liable to enlargement at the 

 end, it was found that the fruits' would grow to uniform thick- 

 ness if they were hung up in slings. 



English forcing Cucumbers cannot be grown in the fields 

 successfully, but their smoothness and regularity, with length 

 and vigor of vine, are good qualities, and therefore attempts 

 were made at Cornell to cross the Sion House with the Me- 

 dium Green in hopes of producing a superior sort for out-door 

 use. The results have been interesting from a scientific point 

 of view, but the desired variety has not yet been procured. 



Fruits of promise have been obtained, but they have not pro- 

 duced good seeds. Some of the mongrel fruits developed a 

 tendency of the cell-walls to decay ; the seeds did not mature 

 and the pulp-tissue about them solidified. Near the apex of 

 the fruit the placentas tended to break away from the pod, and 

 in the cavities decay set in, extending to the base of the fruit. 

 All the fruits on one of the plants behaved in this manner, and 

 in no case was the decay visible on the exterior until it ex- 

 tended well down the fruit. In most instances the mongrel 

 vines resembled Medium Green, the staminate parent, more 

 than Sion House. The fruits were generally intermediate 

 through almost every gradation. Some of the vines bore 

 beautiful fruits, twice as long as the Medium Green, nearly 

 cylindrical and almost spineless, and good things are hoped 

 from this cross. 



The spotted mite, which feeds upon the under surface of 

 the leaves, is the most serious enemy to Cucumbers under 

 glass. It can be kept in check by using half a pint of Hughes' 

 Fir-tree oil to two gallons of water and applied in spray. A 

 large black aphis has been a serious pest, but this can also be 

 destroyed with the Fir-tree oil. The powdery mildew will ruin 

 the plants if it once gains a foothold, but this can be held in 

 check by flowers of sulphur placed in a basin and set on an 

 oil-stove in the greenhouse. The house is tightly closed and 

 enough sulphur is evaporated to fill the house with strong 

 fumes for half an hour, care being taken that the sulphur does 

 not burn. 



To the student in plant-variation these forcing Cucumbers 

 possess great interest. They are quite distinct from all others, 

 and yet they are known to have come in recent times from the 

 shorter and spiny field sorts. The earliest mention made of 

 the long-forcing Cucumber is in the Transactions of the London 

 Horticultural Society in 1822, where it is stated that Patrick 

 Flanagan, gardener to Sir Thomas Hare, sent two specimens 

 of cucumbers to the Horticultural Society, one of which was 

 seventeen inches in length and weighed twenty-six ounces. 

 Mr. Flanagan states that he has frequently grown these cucum- 

 bers nearly two feet long, and yet in high perfection for the 

 table. Seeds were given to the society, and were distributed 

 under the name of Flanagan's Cucumber. The surprise which 

 these fruits occasioned among a body of gardeners indicates 

 that they were novelties. The oldest variety which is now 

 grown appears to be Sion House, which was known sixty years 

 ago. From this comparatively recent beginning the English 

 Cucumbers have diverged from their parentage and differ 

 from the common varieties in being very long and slender, 

 cylindrical and not furrowed, spineless, or nearly so, at ma- 

 turity, remaining green until ripe, and producing seeds spar- 

 ingly. The flowers are very large and vigorous, the tendrils 

 thick, the leaves broad in proportion to their length, and the 

 full-grown ones have a tendency to make shallower sinuses 

 than the field kind. The most remarkable peculiarity, how- 

 ever, is their habit of producing seedless fruits, which has 

 already been spoken of. 



Periodical Literature. 



Mr. T. S. Brandegee contributes to the July issue of Zoe, 

 which has only just reached us, an interesting paper on 

 " The Vegetation of Burns," that is, the ground over which 

 forest-fires have run. The open forests of Colorado and Mon- 

 tana are composed of Finns ponderosa, mixed here and there 

 with the Douglas Fir, and are often injured by fires which 

 run through them and which burn the grass, the underbrush, 

 and all fallen dead limbs and trunks, but without doing much 

 injury to the trees themselves, except the young ones which 

 are only protected with thin bark. The Douglas Fir, the Yel- 

 low Pine and a few other trees, Mr. Brandegee tells us, stand 

 without injury a fire hot enough to blacken their trunks, while 

 the Hemlocks and Spruces are killed by a very, slight fire 

 about the base of their stems. The inability of these last to 

 withstand heat arises from the fact that their bark is much 

 thinner than that of the Douglas Fir, the Yellow Pine or the 

 Sequoia. The trees, in all of these interior forests killed by 

 fire, become dry, and afford abundant material for more 

 serious fires in succeeding years, and these subsequent fires 

 being once startedusually destroy everything that escapes the 

 first burn. 



The Redwood-trees of the forests of the California coast, when 

 they are killed or burned to the ground, send up many new shoots 

 from their roots, which soon surround the old stems with a luxu- 

 riant growth, from the midst of which the parent stem in time dis- 

 appears, leaving only the circular groves characteristic of the 

 Redwood. Theforestsof Douglas Fir in the coast region of Ore- 

 gon and Washington destroyed by fire are in time replaced by 



