374 THE FLORIST AND 



COLD GRAPERIES. 



One of the most valuable appendages to a country residence, and which 

 yields a speedy and most luxurious return for the outlay, is a cold grapery. 



This is simply a frame building, with either a span or lean-to glass roof, 

 for the cultivation, without heat, of such varieties of grapes as are not 

 perfectly hardy out of doors. The construction is very simple, being for a 

 lean-to house merely a double frame, two feet in front and twelve feet high 

 at back, nailed to substantial posts set in the ground from three to three and 

 a half feet, with the intervening space filled with tan closely rammed down. 

 The width should be sixteen feet, admitting of two lengths of sash. Such 

 a house is estimated to cost not more than $8 per running foot. 



It may not be generally remembered that most of the splendid bunches, 

 which grace the fall exhibitions of our Horticultural Societies, particularly 

 in the cities, are grown with trifling expense in houses of this description. 

 At the late State Fair, bunches were exhibited by David S. Brown, from his 

 graperies in Delaware County, four of which weighed 25 lbs. 2 oz. One bunch 

 with every grape perfect and large, weighed 6 lbs. 12 oz. H.W. S. Cleaveland, 

 Burlington, N. J., for several years successively carried off the premiums of the 

 Philadelphia Horticultural Society, for his fine black Hamburg grapes also 

 grown in a house without heat. Indeed, we are satisfied, independent of 

 the luxury of such a desert for one's own table, they may be made a source 

 of great profit. Mr. Cleaveland's grapery, which we have visited, was a 

 very simple affair, formerly used for propagating Multicaulis, but he had a 

 fine, deeply dug, well prepared border outside, twenty feet wide. His 

 grapes were always sold beforehand to one establishment in Philadelphia, at 

 fully remunerating prices and the demand was always greater than the 

 supply. It is a matter of some account at least, for a farmer to save time 

 in his marketing. A crop he has merely to deliver at one place and receive 

 his pay, without waiting for customers, in a market house exposed often to 

 inclement weather, has certainly one great recommendation over ordinary 

 and more bulky farm produce. A cold grapery 100 feet long, at $8 per 

 foot, would cost $800, the interest of .which is $48. We believe a net 

 interest of twenty per cent would be obtained by erecting a cold grapery, 

 instead of putting the money out on mortgage, as our farmers generally do 

 with their surplus cash at the end of the year. The attention required 

 would be but very slight, and such as could readily be performed by the 

 females of the family. 



So accustomed are we to an unvarying rotation of corn, oats, wheat, 



