96 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May C. 
gone, and it is uniform in dryness, being neither wet 
nor dry, a bed of such material, about two feet high at 
the back and twenty inches in front, will give the beat 
necessary. 
In this latter case, and also where dung alone is used 
—as in the case of many of our readers, who have no 
access to other materials, and who obtain only a small 
portion of that, day by day, from the stable, byre, &c.—it 
will be sound economy not to place the daily additions 
in a heap, but to allow it to lie scattered somewhat 
thinly until you wish to prepare a heap for your bed; 
' then select a barrow-load or two of the longest and 
; driest, and place it aside. Commence your heap in a 
. circular form, to terminate in a blunt cone, if there is 
I not much of it, or in a square or parallelogram form if 
! there is much. Mix the short and the long together 
nicely, beating it with the fork, but not treading it, and 
! watering all the parts at all dry, unless the parts mixed 
with it are extra wet, as, without moisture, there is no 
fermentation to speak of; and when all is finished, 
: cover with the litter laid aside. In a week or ten days 
it will heat strongly; then lay aside the litter again, 
i and turn the heap over, placing the top at the bottom, 
and the outsides to the middle, shaking it well and re- 
I gularly, and wetting any part extra dry, and covering 
again as before. For purposes of nicety another turn¬ 
ing, at least, will be necessary: the great thing is to get 
the rank steams dispersed without greatly lessening the 
bulk. The more decomposed the material, the more 
diminished will the quantity be, and the shorter the 
period it will be able to produce a continuous heat. 
Organic matter, such as dung and leaves, thoroughly 
decomposed by fermentation — just a natural kind 
of combustion—can no longer yield heat, though they 
may retain it when given, and hence be useful as a 
plunging-surface medium, and for keeping down steam 
when the material is not extra sweet. 
Hence, in most cases, and especially in all such as 
the present, I disapprove of working dung, &c , too 
much in the preparatory heap. When the rank, sul¬ 
phuretted hydrogen, &e., is expelled, I would have it 
built into the bed before the fibre was too much wasted. 
The frame being set, all the surface part will sweeten 
there as well as in the heap. A lady will not at once 
be able to detect, by smell, whether the inside be safe or 
j not for her favourites ; but she can easily note the colour 
of the drops of moisture that hang from the sash-bars in 
a morning. If they are of a yellowish cast, the bed 
must be trusted with nothing. If clear as the dewdrop, 
the bed may be trusted with anythiug, especially if a 
I peg from an eighth to a quarter-of-an-inch is left tilting 
up the sash behind, night and day. This is a safe precau¬ 
tion for a week or two, and for cuttings should always 
be given at night at the season referred to. 
After allowing for settling, such a bed of dung should 
be twenty-one inches at back and about seventeen in 
front; more at an earlier period, and less would do at a 
later period. In building the bed, set it out a foot 
wider than the frame all round, allowing it to taper to 
six inches wider at the top. Place the longest at the 
| bottom and sides, and select the sweetest and most 
decomposed for the surface. Shake every forkful out 
well in building, and beat every layer of six inches or so 
' firmly with the fork; but do not tread it. If not so beat 
the air would penetrate so easily, that you would have a 
violent heat, which would again dry up the material, 
and thus arrest decomposition, and the continuous heat 
which it gives. Free aceess to air will arrest decompo- 
, sition, just as excluding it will do. If the material 
becomes dry, decomposition is arrested, and the heat 
reduced to a minimum. If the materials are beat or 
trod too firmly, the bed will heat irregularly, and the 
heat will go before the material is decomposed, merely 
because part has become firm and dry, and the de¬ 
composing agents — moisture and air — cannot get 
at it. 
Hence, again, one reason for not fermenting the 
matter too much before using it for such temporary 
purposes as striking cuttings in pots. In a great pro¬ 
portion of cases that seek our advice such material is 
limited. If the heat does decline a little, or a good deal, 
lifting out the pots in a good day, and protecting them, 
and giving the under stratum of dung a good turn over, 
will often be sufficient to give plenty of heat for another 
month or six weeks. Besides, a fresh supply of a few 
barrowfuls of sweet dung may be prepared, and, sup¬ 
posing the bed was rather shallow at first, a little of the 
fresh could be added at the bottom at a fresh turning. 
I have seen much labour spent on linings to beds, with 
no little danger from steam entering, when there was 
plenty of material for heating in the beds if moisture 
and air could have got at it. When the crop is a fixture, 
as in cuttings planted out, or in Cucumbers and Melons, 
there can be no turning of the material, unless the bed 
is placed on a platform, and the dung placed in a cham¬ 
ber beneath it. But in beds of cuttings, the same prac¬ 
tice may be followed which I used to adopt when I grew 
Melons and Cucumbers largely on dung-beds. I did 
not waste the material too much iu working it before¬ 
hand, provided I had a layer of sweet material for the 
top. When the bed was nearly finished, several long 
tubes of small earthenware draining-pipes, or anything 
else most handy, were fixed in the bed, outside and in¬ 
side of the frame, and to a considerable depth from the 
surface. The upper end of these tubes was kept closed 
with a piece of slate, or a daub of clay. Inside, a small 
rod, or stake, was placed, with its lower end supplied 
with a little ball of moss firmly tied to it. When the 
heat began to decline, the rods, or stakes, were pulled 
up, and if—as was generally the case—the moss balls 
were dry, warm water was poured in at the tubes, and 
the ends left open for a time for the admission of air, 
and fermentation commenced afresh, and the heat could 
thus be renewed until the whole mass was nearly 
thoroughly decomposed. 
With those hints, and a little practice, I have no 
doubt our lady correspondent will be soon perfect in 
hotbed management. Some gentlemen, in their wisdom, 
may imagine that some parts are too abstruse for lady- 
experimenters ; but, with all respect for the lords of the 
creation, I. must say, that from all that has come under 
my notice, ladies know far more of the theory and 
practice of gardening, and enter more thoroughly into 
it, than gentlemen. A little straw tied round such a 
frame, and hanging down over the sides of the bed, 
would keep all more snug and cleanly. 
1 find I can only say a word on propagating. In 
previous volumes the whole minutiae have been entered 
into. Here my space will permit nothing on theory; 
only a word or two as to practice. The exclusion of 
light and air is right, so far. The keeping of the cut¬ 
tings from light, and giving no air, carried to an extreme, 
will not promote a rapid vegetation. Growing cuttings 
require, at first, a still, moist atmosphere, and what 
Mr. Beaton calls twilight , as respects light. But the 
more quickly the cutting will stand more and more 
sunlight and air, the sturdier will the young plant 
be. Extra shade is ever followed by extra weakness. 
Take a Verbena cutting, for instance. It was growing 
freely on the mother plant. All you have got to do, is 
to keep it healthy and vigorous, and it will put out roots 
in self-defence. No cutting in spring should ever be 
allowed to flag or hang its head. Expose it to a free 
current of air, and to the unshaded sunbeam, and it 
will flag from the loss of its moisture, and the fixation 
of its carbon. Keep it perfectly close, by bell-glass or 
otherwise, and the confined air will become impure, and, 
if much shaded, the top of the cutting will bp drawn 
