JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 5, 1883. ] 
covered slightly with soil the pots are placed in a warm corner 
out of doors till the plants are up level with the rims of the pots, 
when they are filled to within an inch of the top with some of the 
same material as the seeds were sown in. This batch is then 
placed in the Bean pit where they are to be grown. A small stick 
is placed to each plant, to which it is carefully tied as it advances 
in growth. This seems a small matter and somewhat fussy, but 
let anyone try, say, twenty pots with sticks and twenty without 
them. The result will prove that the extra trouble in sticking 
and tying will be amply repaid. After placing the early plants 
where they are to remain another sowing is made and placed 
beside them, and treated in every respect the same. Again 
another sowing is made every ten days until the outdoor crop is 
ready for use. 
The pit we grow Beans in very successfully is a lean-to, rather 
fiat, with scarcely head-room for a tall man. This pit is better 
adapted than would a higher structure, as it is easier kept at a 
given temperature and does not allow moisture to escape. To 
grow Beans well plenty of heat and moisture is essential. We 
keep up a night temperature of from 65° to 70°, with a corre¬ 
sponding rise by day, while on bright sunny days we often let it 
increase to 100° or more, with every part of the pit thoroughly 
saturated with water, lied spider is the greatest enemy with 
which the Bean has to contend, but if a bag of soot is placed in 
the water tank and a liberal supply given through the syringe 
this pest will not gain a footing. Judgment, however, must be 
used in this matter in the short days of November and December, 
or a good set will not be obtained. We find Osborn’s as good as 
any variety for early work, while for later crops we use Sir 
Joseph Paxton and Williams’ Prolific.— Geo. Merritt. 
HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS—HOW TO SUCCEED. 
In gardens where quantities of small decorative plants are 
wanted, a good plan is to have long low pits in divisions for each 
set of plants. These are what we would erect if called upon to 
do so. Mr. Taylor says that so long as a plant can be kept mode¬ 
rately moist the less it is watered the better. A truer and more 
important fact never was written. To secure this pots should as 
far as possible be plunged, not only to secure this condition but 
also a uniform temperature for the roots, which is not of less im¬ 
portance. For this reason I would have beds rather than stages. 
Such plants thrive best near the glass ; for this reason 1 would 
have low flat roofs and narrow houses with a path down the 
centre. If I had one such house 40 or 50 feet long for growing 
Cyclamens, Primulas, Cinerarias, Calceolarias, &c., I should prefer 
to put in a partition, and then in one end I could keep up condi¬ 
tions much more suitable for the Primula than the Calceolaria, 
and in the other a climate in which the Cineraria would not be 
drawn. 
This is the one greatest mistake gardeners make. Anxious to 
grow everything good, unsuitable plants are grouped together, 
and then houses are voted unsuitable. Far better grow a select 
few, and have them well done, than a host and have nothing good. 
If Orchids are grown, what a mistake to grow Odontoglossums, 
Dendrobiums, and Ccelogynes together 1 The chances are all will 
fail ; then the house will be blamed. Let anyone try Apples, 
Peaches, Grapes, Melons all in one house, and compromise matters 
to suit all. You will suit none. Yet in the matter of other plants 
this is what is attempted. A very moderate man will grow good 
Hamburgh or Muscat or even Duke of Buccleuch Grapes if he has 
a house for each ; but associate them, and the chances are he will, 
even though ever so clever, fail with one or other. Yet these are 
only varieties of one species, and the fault lies not with the erec¬ 
tion—not even, it may be, with the cultivator—but with the selec¬ 
tion of varieties. How much more is this the case when greatly 
differing species are crowded into one building ! 
Employers are often to blame. Knowing nothing of the diffi¬ 
culties of gardening they suppose success easily wun. The gar¬ 
dener grows Azaleas better than anybody for miles ; but Lord A 
or B’s man has a Bose house, and keeps up a supply of Tea Boses 
all winter. So many Azaleas are not wanted. The gardener is 
directed to dispose of half, and to replace them with Boses. He 
may object. Boses must be had, and if they are not equal to my 
lord’s the gardener is supposed not to be a “ Bose man.” This is 
no fancied occurrence. All sorts of things are wanted out of one 
building, and because it cannot be done employers are dissatisfied. 
For special things special roof angles may be desirable, but 
when one set of gardeners maintain that an acute one is best for 
Peaches and another maintain the opposite, and both succeed, we 
may conclude that a degree or two makes little difference. The 
same may be said of Vines. My idea for both is that houses 
should be high enough and wide enough to give room for extended 
277 
development, and to have the roof at an angle to catch all the 
light possible in spring and autumn—enough will be certain when 
the sun shines at midsummer. For winter Cucumbers or very 
early or late Melons I should choose a steep-pitched roof for the 
same reason. For the same reason we should choose a flat one for 
Beans, Strawberries, and Potatoes. This may seem inconsistent, 
but when we remember that one class can be trained close to the 
glass and the other are dwarf plants plunged in pots or planted 
out, the inconsistency disappears. 
The only really unsuitable buildings—real plant-killers—I have 
seen have been conservatories. I do not refer to the dark tomb 3 
built half a century ago, stone and glass, but those placed where 
the light of heaven is kept off by the house to which they are 
attached ; where the roof is yards above the plants, and where the 
aridity caused by sunshine, often by currents from the house, 
dare not be counteracted by dampings to save such plants as the 
gas fumes have not finished, for fear of spoiling the unnatural 
decoration or causing a dampness. 
But many young men, anxious to avoid the failures for which 
they see others so complacently blaming the house, and remem¬ 
bering the old proverb that a bad reaper never yet had a good 
reaping hock, may ask, “ How are suitable conditions to be ascer¬ 
tained?” Well, experience is the teacher that has taught most, 
and in that school all must learn, and by very diligent application 
too. We learn more by failure than by success, but the experi¬ 
ence need not wholly be our own. If we only knew what we 
have ourselves found out the best of us would be ignorant. We 
must fall back on the experience of others. Is there, for instance, 
one who has had remarkable success in the cultivation of any 
given plant? Probably he only learned success by experience, 
and that experience we must try to make our own if possible. 
Luckily that is not difficult, for men are not rare who have suc¬ 
ceeded and who are willing to make known their experience and 
its results. Is it Orchids? Therein small bulk is the experience 
of a successful grower condensed within the boards entitled “The 
Orchid Grower’s Manual,” and, though the epitomised experience 
of half a lifetime, may be had for the payment given for two or 
three days’ work. Is it the experience of a thoroughly successful 
gardener with Grapes, Pines, Peaches, Melons that is wanted ? 
There it is, the concentrated essence of a lifetime’s experience 
bound up and entitled “Handy Book of Fruit Culture under 
Glass.” Young men often grudge the price of gardening works, 
but they forget that it is not merely books they are buying but 
experience, and that for a few pounds they may obtain, not so 
much of a useful library as of the knowledge, experience, brains 
of scores of others. It is knowledge that is wanted. 
But we would have our younger readers who wish to know 
“ how suitable conditions are to be ascertained,” not to trust 
altogether to either their own or to the experience of others, or 
they may often fail. In spite of the vast amount of accumulated 
experience embodied in garden literature—in spite of the accu¬ 
mulating experience weekly published in the gardening press, 
notably in the case of the Journal of Horticulture —there are 
many things yet that experience has not conquered. Moreover, 
many new plants are being yearly introduced, and in gaining 
knowledge of them by experience many are lost. 
Our knowledge, then, must be something more than that gained 
by experimenting. These latter remarks are addressed to young 
men ; indeed, in all we write young men are kept steadily in view, 
for they are most eager for knowledge and most apt to learn. 
They are in want of advice, and the wiser among them are ever 
ready to follow it when good. In this place a few general re¬ 
marks must suffice ; but in order to ascertain under what con¬ 
ditions a host of plants will be likely to thrive, it is not too much 
to say that a knowledge of botany, agricultural chemistry and 
geology, geography, and meteorology will be of inestimable assist¬ 
ance. For instance, a gardener receives an unknown plant from 
any given place in the world. He is told where it came from, but 
no more. The gardener who knows nothing of the above sciences 
—no matter what his mere experience may be, no matter how 
much of the experience of others he may be possessed of—is likely 
to be at his wit’s end, and the chances are the plant is on the 
rubbish heap before long. But if he knows the latitude and 
longitude of the country it came from he will not err much in 
the temperature he gives. If he is versed in the meteorology of 
the place ; if he knows whether it is moist all the year round or 
dry all the year round, or if the seasons are sometimes hot and 
sometimes dry, he has a guide in regard to the state of humidity 
required that the less well-informed man is without, and is all the 
more likely to succeed in consequence of his knowledge. If he 
has been well drilled in botany he may, even in the absence of 
flowers, be able to pronounce pretty accurately what the affinities 
of the plant are, and this may be all that, in addition to the other 
