November 7 . 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
109 
i 
QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 
GARDENING. 
FUMIGATING PLANTS WITH TOBACCO. 
“ Sometime ago I used to get a gardener to come and 
smoke my greenhouse for me, and for information, I used to 
assist him in the operation of having a round iron box 
made with a hole in the side, near the bottom, for the 
bellows, which was puffed away by me, while the other 
damped with water the tobacco and moss on the top, until 
the house was so full of smoke, that we could stay in it no 
longer, and I used to be dreadfully ill after the operation 
(in fact, dead drunk). My helpmate in this affair has now 
left it to me, and I dreaded the idea of this manner of 
doing things ; and while out on a tour, last May, I met with 
a nurseryman, in a large way of business, who said ho used 
tobacco-paper and cayenne pepper, which he said destroyed 
the aphides completely, but that two or three successive 
nights moderately was better than overdoing of it. I have 
no means of seeing him again, to ask him if he ever met 
with accidents, but I know this, that I tried it with some 
paper I purchased, and it fetched the leaves wofully off my 
Fuchsias last August, but for me, fortunately, I had a good 
stock to supply their place. This, also, scorched my Melons, 
that they never recovered , and one or two other plants were 
injured; of course, all must have suffered from this over¬ 
doing of it. Now comes aphides again, and this week I have 
determined to be more cautious about cooling the smoke, 
and for this purpose I had some touchwood, half-burnt, 
covered with the tobacco-paper slightly damped, and over 
the top I placed three or four iron rods with damp moss on, 
to cool the smoke, as I thought, as it came up. Somehow 
or other, however, the Ferns in my Oncidium basket are 
scorched beyond reason, and I saw that the smoke drifted 
that way in the same manner or place that the Melons 
suffered in August, and to add to my present loss, six or 
seven nice Cinerarias were on the shelf, just above the 
smoke box (The Cinerarias leaves were wet, would it be 
worse on this account? [Yes]), and their leaves next day 
were quite brown, and I have turned them hack into a cold 
frame, and to-day they are curled up and unfit to he seen. 
‘‘ I am an amateur, and the whole work is done by myself, 
after my hours of business. I have a lean-to house, with 
four lights four feet each, and a walk in, six feet high, with 
flat stage, and I keep a successional lot of flowers all the year 
(much thanks to your columns, among others, for inform¬ 
ation). It is in the walk inside that I put this smoke- 
box, and I cannot help it coming in contact with the plants 
before it reaches the top of the house. It will do so in 
defiance of me. The Cottage Gardeners' Dictionary is part 
and parcel of your Journal's name, and in there it says— 
1 Mr. Cameron always found tobacco-paper the most effi¬ 
cacious substance to fumigate with.’ Can this Mr. C. give 
me a lesson, knowing the size of my house, what quantity, 
and how to use it ? I really cannot afford to kill myself 
again with bellows and tobacco. 
“ If you can answer this in your columns, you will very 
much oblige, and, perhaps, it will be useful to others as well 
as myself.—J. G." 
[We have always found tobacco-smoke applied by the aid 
of a Brown’s Fumigator effectual for destroying the green 
fly, but we shall be obliged by any of our readers furnishing 
full directions how they proceed without the aid of that 
machine. We say full directions, because it is the small 
points of precaution which are particularly useful to the 
amateur.] 
CONSTRUCTION OF A GREENHOUSE. 
“ A Country Rector would be obliged by a reply to certain 
undermentioned queries respecting a Greenhouse which he 
proposes erecting, and which will be put together by village 
hands. 
“1. The purposes of the intended structure,—to grow a 
selection of greenhouse plants which do not require in 
winter a higher temperature than 45° at night. The position 
of the greenhouse is rather favourable, being open to the 
south and west, and well protected from the north and east 
by high buildings on the hack and side. Ventilation to be 
secured by back wall, which opens into a large building, by 
the angular part of the roof under the veranda, and by the 
front. The smoke of heating apparatus to pass by means of 
a flue through the back, into a chimney-place in servants’ 
department. Will all this do ? 
“ 2. It is wished, if possible, to exclude rafters and ‘ lights’ 
in the roof. The length of the sash-bars’ being nine feet, 
what would be the safest dimensions for strength ? How 
far distant should they be placed? The glass to be used 
is Hartley’s Rough Patent Plate Glass, twenty-one ounces 
to the foot. 
“ 3. It is proposed to heat the structure by Messrs. Bur- 
bridge and Healy’s boiler, mentioned and described and 
priced in Yol. VII. of The Cottage Gardener, pp. 8 and 
362. Will the house need flow and return pipe all round the 
back as well as the front ? and should the pipes under the 
front stage be near the wall, or in the middle of the stage, 
or where ? Might a small shallow tank, two feet square on 
the surface, be against the door, for propagating purposes, so 
as to let the flow-pipe, if not the return-pipe, pass through it ? 
“ 4. What sized boiler of the sort advertised in Vol. VII. 
of The Cottage Gardener, p. 363, would be sufficient to 
heat the above, with the objects proposed in No. 1 ? Dimen¬ 
sions of south front, sixteen feet; west, nine feet; south 
side, eight feet: total, thirty-three feet. The width of house 
; is eight feet; front stage, about two and-a-balf; walk, three 
1 feet; back stages, about two feet. Local circumstances 
occasion these dimensions." 
[]. We have no doubt that the whole plan will answer 
admirably; and you will thus be able to grow some nice 
dwarf, busliy plants. Of course, we are to understand that 
the air-opening at the back of the house not only enters into 
i a large building, hut that the air of that building is changed 
j frequently, especially in summer. Such a mode of air giving 
will enable you to give more air in winter than otherwise 
would have been easily practicable without hurting tender 
plants. 
2. Suppose that you had a stout bearer across where the 
south and the west fronts meet—from two to three times the 
size of a common sash-bar, and another in the middle of the 
sixteen feet, and the other sash-bars about a quarter stouter 
than usual, and about a foot apart, you would have strength 
enough for a nine-feet-wide roof. If fifteen or eighteen 
inches apart, the bars without rafters would require to be 
double the size of the common sash-bar ; but that would be 
lighter and cheaper than rafters. A lightish bar might be 
used without rafters, except at the end, and a lightish one at 
the junction of the fronts, provided a stout iron rod went 
longitudinally, fixed to the bars along the centre of the roof. 
A fixed roof in such a house is best; and with such pre¬ 
cautions rafters are totally unnecessary. We have seen a 
large house glazed without rafters, with squares fifteen 
inches wide; the bars being about two inches broad, and 
one-and-a-lialf inches thick. Your narrow house would not 
require bars so strong. An iron rod would compensate for 
bulky size. 
3. The sort of boiler named will answer well. There will 
be no necessity for a flow and return-pipe all round the 
house. Two pipes along the front will answer admirably, 
and be quite sufficient to keep up more heat than you want. 
If it were not for coming in the way of the door, it would 
be quite as well to have taken one four-inch pipe round in 
front; make that the highest point, with a pipe air next, 
I and crossed the house ; the pipe going along under the 
' back stage and declining to the boiler. But though some 
would prefer this, there is no necessity for it, nor any reason 
to make inconveniences on that account. We observe there 
is no door leading into the house from the veranda on the 
south, and which we think an oversight, as, having a veran¬ 
da at each end, there would be much pleasure in passing 
through the house either way. The pipes need be no ob¬ 
jection, as they could rise beneath the first stage, beyond the 
pathway, leaving it clear at the one end as well as the other. 
You would find the small tank useful for such purposes as 
you mention, especially if you covered the space with a bell- 
glass ; but unless in cold weather, you would not have much 
bottom-heat, but still enough for many purposes. Were you 
! to build a narrow wall up in front of your pipes, and for 
two or four or six feet in length, and then fill up the space 
between that wall and the front wall of your house with 
cliukers, brick-bats, Ac., aud fine gravel on the surface, 
I 
