2IO FRUIT CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 



very early and late crops this old system is not now to 

 be recommended, in the case of any who can devote a 

 few lights of a pit or house heated with hot water to the 

 purpose, but can be successfully and with comparatively 

 little trouble adopted for the intermediate crops in the 

 hottest part of the season. But, to embrace all classes 

 of growers, we will treat of both the dung-bed and the 

 melon-house systems. 



GROWING MELONS IN DUNG-BEDS OR PITS. 



The preparations necessary for constructing a seed- 

 bed for melons being the very same as for cucumbers, 

 in connection with which we shall detail them, — 

 knowing that early cucumbers are more generally cul- 

 tivated than very early melons, — we will not now occupy 

 space in giving the process here, but refer our readers 

 to the chapter on cucumber-culture. With the same 

 appliances as for cucumbers, the same sort of pits re- 

 commended for fruiting cucumbers in answers for melons ; 

 and when they are fruited on an ordinary hotbed and 

 frame, the heat is maintained in the same way as recom- 

 mended in the case of the seed-bed for raising cucumber- 

 plants. In fact, if melons and cucumber-plants are to 

 be raised at the same time, the same frame answers for 

 both. 



Although melon-culture by this means has often 

 been commenced on the 1st of January, and fruit sent 

 to table early in May, it is a task involving the most 

 incessant watchfulness, and is attended with more or 

 less of uncertainty unless the spring be unusually fine. 

 Hence I do not recommend an earlier commencement 

 than the 1st of February, from which time even it is 



