Jan.] THE FORCING GARDEN. f>07 



the bed, there be laid a toot or eighteen inches of branches or 

 fagots under the dung, it will render the bed less liable to be 

 injured by damp. 



When the plants are a little advanced, with the seed-leaves 

 about half an inch broad, which they should be in live or six 

 days after their first appearance, they are then fit for being 

 transplanted into nursing-pots, to acquire sufficient strength to 

 be afterwards planted out on the bed where they are intended 

 to produce their fruit. 



Before proceeding to plant them into nursing-pots, it will be 

 necessary to have the pots and a sufficient quantity of rich 

 dry light mould, chiefly decomposed dung from an old hot- 

 bed, and vegetable mould well decomposed, carried the day 

 before it is to be used into the frame, that the whole may be 

 of equal temperature, for the young plants to experience as 

 slight a check as possible in their removal from the seed-pot 

 to that of the nursing or succession one, which pots should be 

 about three and a half or four inches diameter at top, and as 

 much in depth. Let the pots be filled about one-half with the 

 earth, then turn the young plants carefully out of the seed-pot, 

 breaking the fibres as little as possible. Place three plants in 

 each pot close to the sides, so that their young leaves may 

 rest upon the top of the pot, then cover their roots with the 

 mould, carefully rubbing it fine with the hands, and filling 

 the pots nearly up to the brim. The deeper the young plants 

 are placed in the pots now, the better; for they will push 

 out roots all the way up the stem fi-om the original roots, as 

 far as the surface of the mould in the pot. The mould should 

 be dry, and, in filling it in, not by any means pressed, but put 

 in quite loose, and the whole should have a gentle watering 

 over-head with a fine-rose watering-pot, which should be con- 

 stantly kept in the frames at this season full of water, which 

 should be of a temperature, as near as can be, to that of the 

 atmosphere of the frame. This being done, stir up the sur- 

 face of the bed and replace the pots, either plunged or half- 

 plunged, according to the state of the heat in the bed. Keep 

 up now a brisk heat, by means of linings round the sides of 

 the bed, so that the temperature within the bed may be kept 

 to about 60° or 65° in the night, and a few degrees of a rise 



