CULTURE OF THE CUCUMBER IN POTS. 



509 



sheet kind, in panes from three feet to four feet in length, may be covered with 

 wooden shutters, reed or straw mats, or Pocock's asphalte roofing-, placed 

 two inches distant from the glass. The great advantage of this house is, 

 that let the weather be what it will the plants can always be properly 

 attended and treated. 



1080. Treatment of the plants. — The cucumber, Mr. Ayres observes, 

 will grow in any soil, even old tan or brick rubbish, provided liquid 

 manure is supplied. He uses turfy loam two parts, thoroughly decom- 

 posed dung two parts, leaf mould two parts, and very sandy turfy peat two 

 parts. The whole thoroughly incorporated immediately before using, 

 but not sifted. Manure water is prepared by steeping two pecks of 

 sheep or deer dung, one peck of pigeon's dung, and half a peck of soot, in 

 a hogshead of boiling rain water ; in two days it will be fit for use. When 

 applied, it is diluted with rain water, and used alternately with clear water 

 from March to October. The great secret of keeping the cucumber in 

 vigorous growth in pots, Mr. Ayres continues, is the use of manure water. 

 The plants should be raised from seed sown on the first of August, so as to be 

 fit for planting in fruiting pots in the first week of September. These pots 

 should not be less than sixteen inches wide, and eighteen inches deep. Two 

 plants should be placed in each pot, but the leading shoot must not be 

 stopped, but be allowed to grow until it reaches the top of the house. On 

 this, success in pot culture mainly depends, for if the plants are stopped, they 

 are thrown into a bearing state before they are sufficiently established, and 

 the consec|uence is early fruit, but a short-lived plant ; but if the plants are 

 allowed to grow to the length of ten or fifteen feet before the leading shoot 

 is stopped, a great quantity of true sap will be generated, and the plant will 

 consequently be better able to support a crop than if it had been allowed to 

 bear fruit before it was properly established" (p. 12). The temperature 

 which Mr. Ayres approves of is 60° through the night, 65'' in dull, and 70° in 

 clear weather, by fire heat ; and 80", 90'', or even 100° with plenty of 

 atmospheric moisture and air in sunny weather. The two shoots from the 

 two plants in each pot are to be trained to the trellis at one foot nine inches 

 apart ; and when they begin to send out laterals these must be stopped at one 

 joint above the fruit. Impregnation or setting the fruit Mr. Ayres believes 

 does neither good nor harm, for he has cut scores of fruit, the flowers of 

 which never expanded. If the fruit grows crooked, he places it in glass 

 tubes or narrow troughs, which mould it into the proper form ; or he sus- 

 pends a small weight by a piece of bast to the end of each fruit, a practice 

 which appears to have been first adopted by Mr. Robert Fish. For various 

 other details we must refer to the work itself, which indeed ought to be in 

 the hands of every cucumber grower, whether on dung beds, in pits in the 

 open garden, or in a cucumber house. We may observe here that cucumbers 

 were, we believe, first grown in a cucumber house on a trellis under the 

 sloping glass about the end of the last century by Mr. Butler, the Earl of 

 Derby's gardener. The roots of the plants w^ere in a bed of soil, and as they 

 ceased to bear they were renewed one or two at a time, so that there was a 

 perpetual crop throughout the year. In 1806 we first saw this cucumber 

 house with an abundant crop, and in 1819, when we again saw it, the same 

 gardener informed us that the house had never been without fruit since the 

 period of our former visit. 



