YOL. XLVII. NO. 1990. 
NEW YORK, MARCH 17, 1888. 
PRICE FIVE CENTS. 
*2.00 PER YEAR. 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year, 1888, by the Rubai, Nkw-Yorker, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
A LITTLE GREENHOUSE. 
Advantages of one for use and show ; not 
expensive-, a lean-to the best; size and con¬ 
struction; mode of heating. 
J ust at this time of year when the sunshine 
is getting bright and warm, and the window 
plants are growing and blooming, and you 
would like to give them all a good place in 
the window where they could have plenty of 
light, sunshine and room, don’t you wish you 
had a little greenhouse? If you had a green 
house you could have lots more plants and 
flowers, and you could have lots ot conven 
ience for sowing seeds, striking cuttings, and 
getting up a youDg stock of plants generally, 
and you wouldn’t need to bother with hot¬ 
beds before April, for you could raise your 
seedlings and root your cuttings in the green¬ 
house instead of the hot-bed, which would be 
required only for growing them with good 
plants preparatory to hardening them off 
before planting them out in summer. And 
you can enjoy the greenhouse in midwinter as 
well as in spring. 
Now, a greenhouse is one of the prettiest 
things you can have about your home. It is 
the place into which you wish to bring all 
your visitors. It and its contents form a 
subject the ladies never tire in talking about; 
there is a contagious infatuation about it 
But you hesitate because of the cost of the 
house and the difliculty in heating it. Well, 
there is nothing in that to frighten any one. 
If you wish to have a little greenhouse 
attached to your dwelling-house you can con¬ 
struct the same easily and cheaply. But if 
your ambition extends to a greenhouse—an 
independent structure, such as florists have- 
then, of course, there will be considerable ex¬ 
pense both in constructing and heating it, and 
a very small house is not economical. But in 
the case of the greenhouse attached to our 
dwelling-house it may be as small as we 
please. 
To begin with: Have the greenhouse on the 
most sheltered and sunniest side of your house 
and never on the north or north-west side. 
Never build a greenhouse where it will be at 
all exposed to piercing cold winds; if the 
house does not afford the necessary shelter, 
then erect for the winter months some tem¬ 
porary shelter as a close-boarded fence; but 
so situated as not to obstruct sunshine for the 
greenhouse. Never build a high house unless 
you have extraordinary heating facilities. 
We often find an inclination to extend bay 
windows into greenhouses; well,these are very 
good, but they are hard to heat. 
The most economical and easily managed 
house is a low lean-to, built up against the 
south side of the dwelling-house, so that the 
top of it will come up to witnin six or eight 
inches of the first-story windows and the front 
of it will be about 12 or 15 inches above 
ground. Width four, six or eight feet just as 
there is room: length to suit. Pitch two feet 
higher at the back than at the front. A six- 
foot-wide house will do, but a wider one will 
be better; the more pitch the less drip and 
the more sunshine. Hight at front 12 or 
more inches above ground, enough to raise the 
house above the snow and slush of winter and 
allow ready drainage away from it. Depth 
inside the house, 6>£ feet above the walk. In 
a narrow house the. walk may be at the back 
or front as is most convenient; in a wide 
house it should be in the middle. Entrance 
may be from the basement, or by steps from 
the ground floor. The roof may consist of 
movable sashes like those of hot-beds, and all, 
except one in the middle, should be firmly, 
screwed down. The one left unscrewed is to 
be used as a ventilator. The ends and front 
should be boarded tight and banked outside. 
We should have light half-inch pine board 
shutters that would fit snugly together for 
covering over the glass at night or in severe 
weather; keep them on day and night. It is 
only in severe weather that such a house will 
need artificial heat. This can be given by a 
kerosene lamp and home-made boiler as 
shown at Fig. 59. Set the boiler and 
lamp at the cold end of the house; and 
don’t have the pipes near the floor or un¬ 
der the benches, as we find them in most 
greenhouses, but within eight to 12 inches of 
the glass, and four to six inches inside from 
the front wall. Any tinsmith or plumber can 
modify this contrivance to suit the case in 
hand, and with elbows in the pipes carry the 
heaters around the ends of the houses as well 
as along the fronts. Even without any artifi¬ 
cial heat, tightly put together house-pits like 
this should never freeze at the bottom, there¬ 
fore we don’t want any heating apparatus 
there; we want it up where the frost is likely 
LIST OF VEGETABLES. 
A list of vegetables preferred; modifications ; 
the best family peas for early use ; crops 
preferred that last a long time. 
WILLIAM FALCONER. 
Jerusalem Artichokes.— White-skinned. 
Globe Artichokes.— Green Globe. 
Asparagus. —Conover’s Colossal. 
Bush Beans. —Early Red Valentine, Gold¬ 
en Wax. 
Lima Beans. —Dreer’s Improved. 
Beet.—Egyptian Turnip. 
Broccoli.— White Cape, 
Brussels Sprouts. —Common Dwarf. 
Cabbage. — Early Jersey Wakefield, All 
Seasons, Drumhead Savoy. 
Cauliflower.— Snowball, Erfurt. 
Carrot. —Half Long, Stump-Rooted. 
Celery.— White Plume. Golden Heart. 
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GREENHOUSE HEATING. Fig. 59. 
to come in. Support the pipes on iron rests, 
as 20-penny nails, hooks, or whatever else is 
handy; and fix up a brick pier to support the 
lamp. 
The idea may strike you that if this pit is 
only dug out in the middle for the walk, and 
the bank of earth is left under the back and 
front benches, it will be more easily heated 
and kept warm, as there will be fewer cubic 
feet of air to heat. But this is not so. Far 
less artificial heat is required when the pit is 
dug out level to the bottom of the walk, and 
the house, too, is very much drier in winter. 
I once was considerably bitten on a large scale 
by this very idea; the fewer cubic feet of air 
to be heated in a sunk pit the easier it would 
be to keep it warm; but the perpetual damp 
troubled me more than the cold, and it was 
not overcome till I dug the pit out level. 
Queens Co., N. Y. w . F . 
j Corn. — Early Marblehead, Squantum, 
Stowell’s Evergreen. 
Cucumber. —Nichol’s Medium Green. 
Egg Plant. —New York Improved. 
Endive.— Green Curled. 
Kale. —Dwarf Curled Green Scotch, Siber¬ 
ian. 
Kohl Rabi. —White Vienna. 
Leek. —Musselburgh. 
Lettuce. —Salamander, for summer; Bos¬ 
ton Market, for winter. 
Musk-melon.—N ew Surprise, for early; 
Hackensack, for main crop. 
Watermelon.— Cuban Queen. 
Okra. —Dwarf. 
Onions. —Red Wethersfield, Yellow Dan¬ 
vers, Southport White Globe. 
Parsley. —Extra Double Curled. 
Parsnip.—H ollow Crown. 
Peas. —Alpha, Stratagem. 
Pepper —Ruby King. 
Potato.—Early Rose. 
Pumpkin.— Cheese. 
Radish.— Early Scarlet Turnip, Wood’s 
Early Frame. 
Rhubarb. —Monarch. 
Salsify. —Common. 
Scorzonera. —Common. 
Sea Kale. —Common. 
Spinach. —Round-leaved. For very hot 
summer weather use_New Zealand."! 
Squash. —Bush, Summer Crookneck, Hub¬ 
bard. 
Tomato. —Perfection, Acme. ' 
Turnip.— Purple-top White Globe; Ruta¬ 
baga, Improved American. 
The above is a very condensed list of good, 
plain, serviceable sorts, every one of which I, 
myself, grow. The variety, probably, is 
greater than Rural readers will care to grow. 
For instance, very few will wish to grow 
Globe Artichokes; any one who grows cauli¬ 
flower won’t want broccoli, and few who grow 
lettuces will care for endive. I have laid no 
stress whatever upon’earliness. Take peas, for 
example. I think it is better to wait four or five 
days and get delicious Alphas than to strive 
for earliness and eat the comparatively taste¬ 
less Daniel O’Rourke—the “Earliest” and “Ex¬ 
tra Early” of many seedsmen. And I have 
avoided new and “fancy” varieties as I am 
not convinced that they have been’^tested 
widely enough. A great variety of any kind, 
say of beans, is confusing; simplify matters 
and confine yourselves to one or two varieties; 
they are enough. And for private use I much 
prefer crops that last a long time in a usable 
condition to those that come in all at once. In 
the case of potatoes I have nothing better 
than Early and Late Rose, but with some of 
my neighbors, Early Ohio, Rural Blush, 
Beauty of Hebron, White Elephant, and 
so on are the favorites. And what 
is true of potatoes is also true of 
melons, cabbages, corn and other vege¬ 
tables. Again, tastes differ: some folks like 
Black Mexican corn, but I wouldn’t have it on 
my table. Some have a fondness for Speckled 
Cranberry Beans and Scarlet Runner Beans, 
but in the face of Valentines for Snap, and 
Limas for shelled I wouldn’t eat them. No 
rigid list should be given, nor should any 
rule be laid down for the cultivation of vege¬ 
tables, as soil, climate and other conditions 
differ materially in different cases; but we 
should experiment a little and find out for 
ourselves what sorts are best suited to our 
soil and circumstances and stick to these 
kinds. Take cauliflower, for example; Large, 
Late Algiers is a standard favorite on Long 
Island; but with me on our land it is much in¬ 
ferior to Lenormand’s or Autumn Giant. 
Queens Co., N. Y. 
HOLSTEIN-FRIESIAN MILK AND BUT¬ 
TER RECORDS. 
Wonderful individual milk and butter re¬ 
cords; still more marvelous average re¬ 
cords ; care and feed of the herd; daily 
feed in all seasons; rations in special test 
cases; a combination of breed and feed 
needed for great results; importance of 
pedigree as illustrated by the Netherland 
family; its great performances; Nether¬ 
land Prince and his wonderful progeny; 
his ancestry. 
The milk and butter yields of some of our 
Holstein-Friesian cows, and a statement of 
the care and feed they receive, might be in¬ 
teresting and instructive to readers of the 
Rural. 
The record of the famous Clothilde—26,021 
pounds two ounces of milk in a year, and 28 
