46 FRUIT CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 



THE PLANTING-OUT SYSTEM. 



Although I have given a good deal of attention to 

 the planting-out system of pine-culture, and made my- 

 self acquainted with the most successful instances of 

 its adoption, I have very seldom adopted it. Not that I 

 suppose fine fruit are not produced by it : facts prove 

 the contrary. But with the space at my command I 

 have decided that, to keep up the supply which I have 

 produced nearly every week in the year, I could more 

 certainly do so on the pot system than by having the 

 plants planted out in beds. Plants in pots are entirely 

 under control at all times, for being moved or removed 

 to force forward or retard the ripening of fruit as 

 circumstances demand. This is of vast importance 

 where the space in pine-beds is small in proportion to 

 the demand for fruit, and in this respect pines in pots 

 give an advantage over the open bed. Neither do I 

 consider it necessary to have finer fruit than can be pro- 

 duced from 9, 11, and 12 inch pots. In fact, it is not the 

 size of pot, nor the greater range that the planting-out 

 system gives to the roots, that are the principal points 

 of good pine-culture. 



The planting -out system may be practised either 

 over a bed of leaves or with hot water for bottom-heat. 

 The best example of this system that I have ever seen 

 was at the Eoyal Gardens, Frogmore. And there, a 

 bed of leaves for bottom-heat is preferred to hot-water 

 pipes. The suckers are not potted, but planted at once 

 into beds of soil over a bed of leaves about two or 

 three feet deep. From the sucker pits they are trans- 

 planted into the succession pits, and from the latter into 

 the fruiting pits, where they are planted two feet apart 



