THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
183 
Frame Culture. — The best melons are produced by rough 
and ready methods, and yet the fruit is not in any way 
adapted for the poor man’s garden, for there must be a 
plentiful and constant supply of fresh manure to carry on the 
cultivation, and the produce is an article of luxury adapted 
only to the tables of the affluent. In great gardens melons 
are grown in houses heated with hot-water pipes, but they 
may be grown quite as well in frames, and in truth there is 
no system that suits the plant so well as the old-fashioned 
hot-bed, for its vapours and gases are more promotive of its 
health than the purer air of the nicely built melon-house, 
heated with hot water, and kept as dry and as clean as a 
drawing-room. 
The First Stage in the cultivation comprises the sowing 
of the seed and the nurture of the plants until they are strong 
enough to be planted out. The first requisite is a good hot- 
bed, and it need not be a large one, as another will be re- 
quired for fruiting the plants. We raise a lot of melon plants 
with cucumbers, tomatoes, capsicums, globe amaranths, and 
eelosias, in a frame only three feet in length by two and a-half 
wide, and find one good horse load of stable-manure twice 
turned suffice for the purpose. 
A thin surfacing of rich mellow soil is spread over the 
manure to form the seed-bed, and the seeds are sown in rows 
across the bed when the heat is steady at 75° to 85*. In 
great gardens this sort of work is begun in January, and is 
carried on in substantial brick pits with the aid of an 
abundant supply of fermenting material. But in a small 
garden, where the appliances are of a less costly nature, the 
first week in March is early enough, for the bed is then con- 
siderably aided by sun-heat, and very much trouble is saved 
in the nursing of the young plants. The seed may be sown 
in pots and pans, but the bed is far preferable as producing 
stronger plants and occasioning far less trouble. Sow the 
melon seeds in rows six inches asunder, and the seeds three 
inches apart in the rows. When they are fairly up, and show 
the leader fairly rising, pinch out the points to compel the 
formation of two or three side-shoots in place of one leader. 
With careful watering and ventilating, if the heat continues 
steady, they will advance nicely, and soon become thrifty 
plants, ready for transference to the bed in which they are to 
fruit The plants should be in the fruiting-bed within four 
