732 



THE PRACTICAL GARDENER. 



[May, 



three or four only of the best and strongest plants in each 

 patch. 



This is the method adopted by the London gardeners, and 

 those who supply the metropolis with this fruit ; but, in the 

 majority of situations, the most certain method of procitr- 

 ing them will be found to put up slight ridges or hot-beds for 

 the reception of the plants, which beds need not be more 

 than eighteen inches or a foot in height, according to the qua- 

 lity of the material of which they are composed, and of a 

 length sufficient for the quantity intended to be grown. Their 

 breadth need not be more than three feet, and placed in ranges 

 parallel to each other, for the greater facility of covering them 

 up and otherwise attending to them, as well as for the more 

 readily filling up the spaces between them with fresh dung, 

 sweepings of lawns, weeds, or other vegetable matter capable 

 of affording an additional degree of heat, should the season 

 turn out cold and backward. These beds or ridges should be 

 entirely covered over with light rich mould, not sifted, but 

 well broken with the spade, to the depth of ten or twelve 

 inches. The beds being thus prepared, remove the plants 

 into them, presuming that they have been previously reared in 

 pans, and potted off' in small pots, three or four plants in each, 

 and forwarded either in some of the hot-beds occupied with 

 melons or cucumbers, or, if wanted in a considerable quantity, 

 upon a bed or beds purposely put up for them. They should be 

 planted out, exactly as directed last month for cucumbers, upon 

 ridges, and their general management attended to in a similar 

 manner ; covering them with hand or bell-glasses, or oil-paper 

 frames, as a protection from the cold and wet ; or they may 

 be sown at once upon the beds or ridges, prepared as above 

 for them, but the heat of the dung will, in this case, be con- 

 siderably exhausted before the plants attain any considerable 

 size. It is, therefore, much better to raise them previously, 

 and transplant them when of a proper size, by which means 

 they will be fully established before the first heat in the ridge 

 or bed declines. 



