480 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 6, 1883. 
highly heated the growths in the immediate locality evaporate 
considerably, cooling their surfaces, which become soft and 
watery, unable to withstand sun, and forming a ready object 
for the attack and spread of red spider. Beds of fermenting 
materials are acknowledged aids in early forcing operations, 
both from the moisture given out and the mildness of the 
heat from the greater area of surface, than is the case with 
hot-water pipes. 
As to ventilation, it seems almost needless to make any 
observations on this head now-a-days. If we are to credit the 
growing of Cucumbers without it, and if our ideas of venti¬ 
lating vineries according to old notions are all wrong, I do 
not see this. Try keeping vineries, Peach houses, and plant 
houses without air. Ventilating houses through the laps of 
the glass sounds well in theory. Much of the heated and 
vitiated air passes out that way, and the balance is restored 
by that driven in by the wind. Waste is no doubt thus 
caused, but the roofs of houses are not the riddles they 
were. Small squares of glass were used, but large panes, 
reducing the laps or openings for the ingress or egress 
of air to a minimum, are now employed. Ventilating houses 
as described may answer for Cucumbers, but those grown on 
that system will, I apprehend, be short-lived; and for fruit 
and plant houses generally the plan is inapplicable. 
Some, in the praiseworthy endeavour to save fuel, shut off 
the heat when it is likely to be a fine day, and to this there 
is no objection, provided it be turned on soon enough to hold 
up the temperature as the sun is observed by clouds, or when 
it declines. It is the reverse, however, of sound practice to 
stop the fire in the morning just because there is the prospect 
of a fine day. The sun heat may keep up the heat until it 
begins to decline in the afternoon, when, unless the fire has 
been set to work in good time, it drops to the maximum from 
fire heat long before dusk, and the fire heat only begins to 
tell at nights, and up the temperature goes to a dangerous 
point. Had the fire been kept going, the house could have 
been ventilated not only much earlier but more fully, com¬ 
mencing when the temperature rose above the day fire-heat 
maximum, and increasing it with the increased sun heat, so 
that the maximum from it would be gained at an early 
period of the day, and continued through it by commencing 
to reduce the ventilation gradually as the sun power declines, 
and withdrawing it altogether at the maximum for the day. 
Thus a good temperature will be insured during the hours of 
light, and from that the heat should gradually fall to the 
night temperature. This will be approximating to Nature 
without those sudden fluctuations which it is the object of the 
cultivator to prevent, and thus he may excel in growing 
plants better than they are seen in their natural state. 
Air is essential to prevent a weak condition of the tissues? 
and to give firmness to the growths. Upon this depends 
very much the health of plants, their flowering satisfactorily, 
the fecundation of the blossoms, and the quality and flavour 
of their fruit. Air should never be given to lower the tem¬ 
perature, but to prevent it becoming too high. It should 
be given early, or as soon as the sun begins to act on the 
Iiouse ; and were this more strictly attended to there would 
be less scorched leaves and fewer mishaps in other ways. It 
should be given as far as possible so as not to produce a 
current especially of cold air, and it is always better to allow 
a few degrees higher range of temperature from sun heat 
than admit cold air in quantity by the ventilators to reduce it 
to a given figure. It does not do to admit air to a house at 
75°, so as to bring the temperature down, which ought to 
.have been ventilated from 65°, for this gives a sudden and 
disastrous check. Even in dull sunless weather a little air 
■is advantageous, as it keeps the foliage from becoming so 
soft and thin as to be unable to withstand sun. After very 
<dull weather the foliage of many plants flags with a return 
of bright weather; more especially is this the case when the 
house has been kept close and moist, and which a little extra 
fire heat in the daytime so as to allow of a little ventilation 
would have remedied. In cases of this description, and 
they are common enough in forcing operations, the ventilation 
of a house in bright weather following a dull period should 
be careful, it being better to allow the heat to rise than admit 
much air to keep it down, as with a comparatively close 
house the evaporation from the foliage will not be nearly so 
great as were an abundance of air admitted; then by 
increasing the ventilation from day to day very little effects 
of the transition will be felt, as the foliage will become 
gradually hardened through inuring it to a changed con¬ 
dition of circumstances.—G. Abbey. 
TRAINING RASPBERRIES. 
A correspondent (“F. J.”) writes:—“What is the best 
kind of frame for training Raspberries to ? Kindly give 
particulars enough as to height, &c.. to enable me to make one, 
and say whether it is better to train the canes perpendicularly, 
or obliquely like cordon Pears.” 
As there are doubtless many persons who desire similar 
information, it will not be inappropriate to i*efer to some of the 
different methods of training that are practised, as each culti¬ 
vator can then adopt the one that appears the best adapted to 
his position and circumstances. 
It may perhaps be well to state at the outset that the greatest 
bulk of Raspberries—the hundreds of tons that are produced for 
sale in markets and for meeting the enormous demands of jam 
manufacturers—are gathered from canes that are not trained at 
all—that is, one neither supported by stakes, trelliswork, strands 
of wires, or tied to each other in the form of bows or arches. 
The canes are strictly self-supporting; but when grown in this 
natural manner there must be an absence of that dense over¬ 
crowding that is not unfrequently seen in gardens where growth 
struggles with growth in endeavouring to benefit by the light 
and an* above them, the canes in consequence being long, soft, 
whip-like, comparatively destitute of woody tissue, immature, 
and essentially unfruitful. They are not of this character in the 
fields of Kent, but hard, sturdy, short-jointed, and in a condition 
generally to render stakes or any other kind of support quite 
superfluous. They may be also similarly grown in gardens 
where ample space is afforded them. 
Several years ago some varieties of Raspberries were planted 
in a garden. Some of them were secured to stakes in the ordinary 
manner, others had strands of wire stretched from stake to stake, 
to which the canes were trained in continuous rows; but for 
testing the self-supporting plan a row of Carters’ Prolific was 
planted by the side of a walk, and the canes after being duly 
thinned—not in the autumn after injury caused by overcrowding 
in summer was done, but in the spring to prevent it—were left 
to take care of themselves. Whether in consequence of the 
superiority of the variety or the plants receiving more air by 
being near the walk, or by a combination of both circumstances, 
is not perhaps exactly determinable, but certain it is this row 
always produced more than twice the weight of fruit afforded by 
any other row of the same length, whether trained to stakes or 
wires, the variety so grown being the true Fastolf, which is 
admittedly good. 
It might be imagined by some readers that the untrained 
row in question had a slovenly appearance. The reply to that 
surmise is, that if such was the case no one observed it, even in 
winter, while in summer it was the most attractive of all, because 
so heavily laden with its large red fruit. This experience is 
recorded, not so much for the information of “F. J.,” as for 
other persons, not a few of whom fancy they cannot grow 
Raspberries in their gardens because they cannot readily 
procure stakes, and are not prepared to incur the expense 
of making a wire or wooden framewoi'k for supporting the 
canes. With good soil and thin planting they may have the 
finest crops of this useful fruit without any such aids if they 
grow the true Carter’s Prolific. Not far from Mr. Cannell’s 
nursery at Swanley is a field of fifty acres, mostly of this 
variety—millions of canes without one stake, and from which 
ten tons of fruit are sometimes gathered during a fine morning 
before breakfast. 
But to the training. If the canes are planted a foot apart in 
a continuous row, strong iron standards securely fixed at the end 
of each row, and two or three lines of strong wire stretched from 
post to post, these wires supported by lighter uprights of iron or 
wood at 9 feet intervals, make the best and most durable frame. 
Strong oak posts at each end of the row, however, answer well, 
but they must be well strutted, as represented in fig. 94, so that 
the wires can be tightly stretched. Many frames are made by 
driving down a row of strong stakes and attaching from stake to 
