THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION.— August 2G, 1856. 
383 
dispensable, Emperor Napoleon, Dazzle, Royal Dwarf, 
Princess Royal (not Conway’s), Baron Hugel, /Jariaway, 
and Collins's Superb, are all kinds peculiarly fitted, by 
strength and stature, to become “yearly tenants” of 
pincushion beds all over the three kingdoms. Now, if 
you should ever adopt our pincushion-bed system, the 
most useful and genteel for most places, recollect this 
one thing in particular—that if you plant out more than 
two opposite or match beds with one kind, or one 
seedling, or one species, or one variety of any one race 
of plants, people will go away and say, “All very fine, 
and that sort of thing, but they are (meaning yon) 
wanting in resources.” D. Beaton. 
HOUSE FOR EARLY FORCING. 
“ I have a Vinery, one of a range of lean-to’s, built on 
slightly sloping ground. The one in question is for early 
forcing—twenty feet by eighteen deep ; walk down centre ; 
border seven feet wide on each side; power of extending 
front border outwards; back border not filled with soil, 
because I have no confidence in Vines so grown ; four-inch 
pipes (flow and return) run down walk and round front 
border. The heat is not sufficient; the furnace and boiler 
are just below the back corner of the house; the chimney 
is built on tlio outside of the wall. Could I take the 
smoke by a flue round the back border, and so increase 
the heat when required ? If so, should the flue be brick¬ 
work or earthenware pipes ? What is the best thing I can 
do with the back border ? Would it be well to make it into 
a pit for leaves or other bottom-heat by fermentation ? 
In other words, if my note is intelligible, what would you 
do with such a house, where early forcing of fruit is the 
desideratum, and not flowers ? Aspect of house due south. 
Saddle boiler some feet below level of walk.—M. P.” 
There are soveral ideas that suggest themselves 
respecting this house that may be worth mentioning for 
the sake of those who are thinking of building. 
1. For early forcing the roof of such a house is too 
fiat, and more especially as there is no upright glass in 
front. The back wall will bo only six or seven feet 
above the front one, and, therefore, the house partakes 
rather of a pit character. For ripening Grajies in 
August and September such a house would answer 
admirably; to ripen them in March and April would 
require more skill and care, though by that care good 
gardeners get fine Grapes early in any house. From 
being low, less heating surface is required than if the 
house was lofty and exposed to a frosty wind, as well 
as the cooling effects of radiation of heat from the 
glass. Were such a house sunk two or throe feet in the 
ground, it would bo more economically heated still, and 
it would be very easy to cover at least the front part of 
the glass with shutters, straw covers, or calico blinds, or 
mats, or a cover with a roller that would go over the 
whole house. I was lately applied to about a bouse 
almost identical with the present, and in which the 
proprietor complained that shelves of Strawberries, 
suspended at intervals of two or three feet along the 
roof, and from which he expected ripe fruit in February 
and March, were nearly all barren, the flowers refusing 
to set. His object was to have these Strawberries 
before the Vine leaves got very large to shade them, 
and the gardener got blamed for incapacity, when, 
unless in a very bright winter, he had not a chance of 
meeting his employer’s wishes. The best position for 
Strawberries in such a house would be at a short 
distance from the ridge at the back wall, because there 
the plants would have all the light transmitted through 
the glass, and a considerable portion reflected from the 
back wall. I may mention here, in passing, that several 
subscribers have taken the trouble of pointing out to 
me that a late leader in a contemporary has so simplified 
tho matter of Strawberry forcing, that all our minute 
directions are so much waste paper. Without minutely 
entering on the subject, I have merely to state, that ; 
what is peculiarly good in the mode so recommended is ' 
not new, but has been practised by myself and others 
for many years, and also recommended long ago in 
these and other pages; that whoever follows that system, 
and expects early fruit, will know what disappointment 
is; and, finally, that the much-praised mode of forcing, 
to secure fruit towards the end of May, is no forcing, 
properly speaking, at all, as an octogenarian friend of 
mine manages to get them as early, if not earlier, on a 
common border, by covering the plants with a garden 
frame. This, however, by the way. In the case of the 
gentleman I have referred to, any alteration I might 
suggest, provided the present roof could be used, was to 
be carried out, and there was no necessity for raising the 
brick wall, as that was a fixture. Well, by means of a 
few posts and a ridge board, the north end of the 
rafters and sashes was raised from three to four feet, and 
a short-hipped roof of asphalt, whitened inside, con¬ 
nected the ridge board and the wall (glass would have 
been better), and since then the Strawberries have set 
very fairly, because the rays of light, instead of 
striking them faintly and very obliquely, came upon 
them nearly perpendicularly in the early months when 
I they were coming in bloom. In such a case more heat 
I was required, because there was a greater radiating 
j surface. Tho great fault of all low, flat roofs, when used 
for early forcing, is, we cannot get direct light in pro- 
I portion to the heat it is necessary to give, 
j 2. The border seems to be elevated above a mass of 
rubble quite correctly, but there is no appearance of a 
drain, which would not be wanted if the subsoil was an 
open gravel or chalk, but which would be necessary if 
at all stiff and tenacious, and might either be brought 
along the front of the house, or taken through it to the 
back, where the ground seems to have a natural fall. 
| Everything in the shape of stagnant moisture should be 
j avoided. 
j 3. The seven-feet border inside, if supplied with 
fertilising material on the surface, or rich manure- 
waterings in the growing period, will be amply sufficient 
space for the roots of Vines to fill such a house, though 
there is no objection whatever to have the front wall on 
arches to let the roots out, if only a moderately early | 
crop was required. For a very early crop I would 
■ prefer the border being entirely inside, 
i 4. Unless for early forcing, say, commencing in 
November, the piping ought to bo sufficient; in fact, it 
ought to do even then. Four four-inch pipes in such a 
space ought to do the work ; and the boiler seems to be 
placed all right. I rather suspect that the pipes along 
the front and under the pathway do not heat equally 
well, either owing to the way in which the pipes are 
taken from the boiler, or from air being enclosed in 
some of the ways so frequently referred to, tho remedies 
for which have often been given. 
5. Is there any reason why tho front pipes should 
not be on the same level as those beneath the walk, or ; 
those now beneath tho walk elevated to a similar level 
with those in the front of the house? There is no 
; necessity for these if air pipes are properly secured at 
the highest points, or there is an open cistern there. If 
the front pipes are lowered, there’ would be a los’s of 
some eight or twelve inches in the width of the border; ! 
but for very early forcing there would be the advantage, 
that the pipes in front, as well as those beneath the 
path, would act on the soil in which tho Vines were 
planted. In some such arrangement as that which now 
exists we have seen a house worked admirably by 
I making the two front pipes flow-pipes, and the low ones 
1 under the path return-pipes. All pipes that are such 
| act more slowly on the atmosphere of a house than 
those placed above the surface of the soil or flooring. 
