IN THE CULTURE OF TINE-APPLES. 



141 



to place the soil for the plants, but also prevents any extremes 

 of heat or cold, moisture or dryness. 



A tank-bed made as above will only require, for keeping up 

 a sufficient bottom heat, a brisk fire for a few hours two or three 

 times a week ; but in the growing season I find it answers much 

 better to light a fire every afternoon for an hour or so, just to 

 get the water in the tanks pretty hot, and then, on shutting up 

 for the night, I take off all the slate covers, and admit the steam 

 amongst the plants, replacing the covers in the morning. I am 

 now having a second pit heated with tanks, and hope in a few 

 months hence to have both our pine-houses heated in the same 

 way ; and when these are done I shall do entirely away with 

 bark for pine-groiving, and I am perfectly convinced that I shall 

 be able to grow double the weight of fruit, and at less than one- 

 half the expense to my employer, than I have hitherto been able 

 to accomplish with bark beds and with pot culture. The soil I 

 have used is a mixture of sandy peat and loam, exactly the same 

 as I use for greenhouse or hothouse plants. I am of opinion 

 that pines will grow to the highest perfection in any open porous 

 soil that will not become bound, hard, and dry, such as leaf 

 mould and loam mixed, or loam and peat, or good sandy loam, 

 or peat alone. I should not be afraid to grow first-rate fruit in 

 any of the above soils, provided the houses were good. Liquid 

 manure I have never used, and I have never been able to per- 

 ceive its good effects when used by others. The minor details 

 of pine-culture on the tank system are so few and simple that 

 they do not require much notice, and may safely be left to the 

 discretion of the cultivator ; and all books that have been written 

 on the subject are but of little, if any, use whatever. 



The use of tanks, or gutters, for bottom heat, may be extended 

 to a great variety of purposes, with great and certain success 

 for early crops both of fruit and vegetables. For vine borders 

 I have no doubt they would answer well, and, at the same time, 

 would not be expensive, as a very gentle heat only would be 

 required. Pits of five or six feet in width, with a single gutter 

 through the centre, would be found to answer admirably for all 

 kinds of vegetable forcing, or even for show pines, where large 

 fruit is wanted, although for the latter purpose there can be no 

 doubt that the use of fermented stable manure is preferable to 

 any other material. 



