72 FRUIT CULTURE UNDER GLASS. 



always with water at a temperature of 80°. As soon 

 as the young roots reach the sides of the pots and 

 down to the drainage, raise them by degrees out of 

 the plunging material, and place them on its surface. 

 Eange the night temperature at 65° at night, with 10° 

 or 15° more by day with sun. As soon as they have 

 pretty well filled their pots with roots, and begun to 

 grow away freely with stronger and more transparent- 

 like growth, shift them into larger pots : 7 and 8 inch 

 pots are large enough for growing vines into an ex- 

 cellent condition for planting ; for far more depends 

 on the character of the roots they make, and the ripe- 

 ness and soundness of the canes, than on mere bulk 

 of growth. 



There is nothing that so much influences the char- 

 acter of the roots that young vines make after this 

 stage as the nature of the soil, and the position in 

 which they are grown. Take one of these young vines 

 now ready for a shift out of a 4-inch pot ; let an 8 or 

 10 inch pot be drained, as is so often the case, with a 

 few large pieces of broken tiles or even bricks put into 

 the bottom of the pot in a careless manner: pot, it in 

 a soil of rather tenacious character, and add a large 

 proportion of rotten manure ; then plunge in bottom- 

 heat, and grow it crowded together with others far from 

 the glass, and what is the result ? The soil, instead of 

 being thoroughly filled with well-ripened fibry roots at 

 the end of the season, is only occupied by a compara- 

 tively few long fleshy roots, which never ripen properly, 

 and die in the winter. The cane itself is not of that 

 compact, short-jointed, well-ripened stamp which alone 

 is a sure indication that all is right. When such a 

 vine is shaken out in spring to be planted, it is found 

 comparatively rootless, and in every way inferior. 



