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ON THE CULTIVATION OF CAPE ERICAS OR HEATHS. 



BY DAVID CAMERON, A.L.S., Botanic Garden, Edgbaston. 



There are few individuals possessing a greenhouse (however small) that do not 

 attempt to grow some of the Cape Ericas, and too often with but indifferent 

 Success. This want of success for the most part arises from an insufficient 

 circulation of air, or from not keeping the soil in the pots in a medium state of 

 moisture, the roots being apt to perish if kept for a short time too moist, and if 

 allowed to get too dry, the young fibrous roots will share the same fate, more 

 particularly if the pots are exposed to the direct rays of the sun. 



A more economical and surer way to grow them is in the cold frame set upon 

 a dry bottom plunged in porous sand. Here they may remain both summer and 

 winter. The lights in summer should be kept off during dull or cloudy weather 

 both night and day, but during clear sunshine should be only uncovered from four 

 in the afternoon until nine the next morning, taking care in the middle of the day 

 to have the sashes on, and to give plenty of air. In winter the sashes must be 

 drawn off in mild dry weather daily, and covered with mats, or some other 

 covering during frosty nights, and in very severe weather. When there is no 

 sunshine they will also require sometimes to be kept on, and some dry litter or 

 other loose material put around the frame. The advantages derived from 

 plunging them in the sand are, that the frost never reaches further than the 

 surface of the soil ; that they will want little or no water from November until the 

 middle of February, and that even during summer they will not require water 

 near so often as if they stood upon the stage of the greenhouse, or out of doors, 

 along with the greenhouse plants. To keep the plants in a healthy growing 

 state they should be repotted into larger pots as often as the roots get matted 

 around the sides of the pots in good sandy peat, which should be more rough at 

 each successive shifting, and the balls gradually raised in a conical form above 

 the surface of the pots. The tops of the young shoots should also be occasionally 

 pinched off to force them to send out side shoots, so as to make them neat bushy 

 plants. As they come into flower, they may be removed into the greenhouse, 

 and returned to the frame when they have done flowering. 



An economical and still better protection for ericas is a pit of the length and 

 breadth suited to the quantity it is intended to protect, which like the frame, 

 ought to be upon a dry soil, or made perfectly so by draining. The bottom should 

 be sunk from eighteen inches to two feet below the surface, and should have a 

 cavity of about a foot from the bottom. This may be done by raising piers, and 

 covering them with large slates or tiles ; the outer walls should also be built 

 hollow, which both keeps it dry and warm in winter. 



The management as to air, watering, plunging, &c, will be the same as 

 recommended for the frame. 



VOL. II. — no. xiii. — march, 1838. c 



