THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN* Jaxeaiy 1, 1861. 
190 
being down to 18°, and put four mats thick on. Then 12° 
-uf frost, and on the sixth night I put a deep covering of 
. dry materials over the mats ; and as long as the frost will 
last, even if should be for six weeks, I shall not open this 
pit nor let the sun shine on the glass; but I am not yet 
sufficiently covered to hold out against a down-to-zero 
frost, and I shall add more to the covering or not accord¬ 
ing as the glass tells the fall of the temperature. After 
all that covering my glass is frosted just as on the first 
afternoon; the mats are also stiff, and all the materials 
over them are stiffish also, and the air round my pits 
• cannot be much over 30° all this time; but I have no 
glass inside to tell how it is, and I am always afraid to 
trust to common thermometers that way, instead ot the 
eye and the feel of a friendly hand among the leaves. 
Now, these plants are, at last, sent, to rest entirely by 
cold, the most natural method of inducing entire rest. 
The pit is quite dry, and the longer I can keep them at 
rest the better for them and the easier for me. I shall 
keep them in the dark as long as the frost continues, and 
shall not open the glass till four days of thaw have 
passed, and then shall not open the glass till the first 
cloudy day, when I shall admit air very freely. When 
my Punch Geranium was young, many years back, that 
was just how I used to keep 5000 plants of it. every 
winter, and I know of no better method for all kinds of 
frame plants. There is not a shade of difference between 
my present plan and that which I practised twenty years 
since; hnd I am convinced that the nearest way the plan 
can be imitated, the safer the plants will get through a 
long winter. 
There is one other move, however, which helps me 
greatly—I never water any such plants the whole winter. 
They had not had a drop from the end of last September, 
and I hope it will reach to the end of next March ere 
they need watering. The saving of time in looking after 
the watering of so many thousand plants, for five months 
at least, must be considerable. The yearly run with the 
5000 Punches at Shrubland Park was just ste: months 
without a single drop of water ; but then they were not 
in pots—another considerable saving, only planted out in 
rows across the pit, then thoroughly watered to settle down 
the soil, after that the glass off every fine day, and air on 
at nights till the frost put a stop to it. By that means 
the surface of the bed got sufficiently dry to hold on 
without causing damp, while the bottom was moist enough 
for the requirements of the roots. 
My present plan is a little improvement on that. The 
plants at e all out of pots, and are put in as thick as they 
can be placed in rows across the pit; each row is watered 
as soon as it is planted, and then an inch of dust-dry 
cocoa-nut refuse is put all over the surface, and in between 
the plants ; but fine leaf mould, from under cover, would 
do just as well, or the fine siftings from old spent tan, or 
very dry sawdust. But I believe a better thing than any 
of these would be half an inch thick of sifted peat earth, 
which was as dry as Scotch snuff at the time of planting, 
and I also believe that any kind of bedding plant would 
keep easier that way, and at one-half the cost of time and 
trouble of looking after them, than by having them in 
pots, and with hot-water pipes. Hundreds of thousands 
of little Heaths, and others just as tender, and not over 
three inches in length, are kept in the London nurseries 
with only one mat to keep the glass clean, the rest cf the 
covering being straw or stubble. But these being in very 
small pots must have occasional waterings, which doubles 
the expense over the plan of not watering at all; also, 
doubles the risk of moulding or damping off. 
The great error and the greatest danger are in the 
fidgety ways of amateurs, who fear their plants are done 
for if they escape being uncovered for three consecutive 
days at a time. I think nothing of having my pets three 
weeks at a stretch as dark as the thickest covering can 
keep them. Bat where everything is wet or damp inside, 
and the alternate chills and vapours which are caused by 
every blink of the sun being used to keep up the heat, 
render the plants so excitable, and so liable to the least 
cause of injury, that the wonder is how many of them 
escape a sharp winter. 
At the time of taking up the bedders, and of thus 
planting out the old and young stock, I cut off almost 
every leaf, and never cut a top from a young plant for 
fear the wound should fester. But when old plants, or 
young ones that are strong and healthy, are potted for 
wintering by artificial heat, the best plan is to cut the 
old ones well down, and to take off a little of the top of 
all the young ones; unless, indeed, these should be 
wanted for cuttings next February and March. There, 
then, is the essence of our best practice for the last 
twenty years. 
The present Christmas frost has laid the necessary 
foundation for comparing notes ; and at such a time, 
under present circumstances, a tale of this drift is not so 
likely to get in at one ear and out at the other, as is 
sometimes the case with our most earnest precepts. The 
most telling thing in favour of my tale is this—that for 
the last twenty years I do not remember to have ever 
seen an insect of the fly kinds affect any one plant that 
was thus wintered without a pot or hand-watering. 
With all my plants I never have an insect among 
them. I had a beautiful fumigator given to me as a 
present; but never expecting to need a cloud or a puff 
from it, I gave it away to a learned author in London, to 
kill the moths of the libraries he was then consulting, 
and he did kill them to some purpose, and brought to life 
that valuable record of things which the moths would 
otherwise have devoured. Another man, or firm of men, 
sent me a canister of some tremendous stuff to kill all 
manner of insects ; but insects do not trouble me, and I 
had no means of testing the proof of the thing. One year 
about the end of April, after a very mild winter, that I 
could not possibty get my Verbenas all to rest, I recollect 
seeing some fly on the top shoots of some of them, but 
having quietly stopped all my Verbenas that week, as if 
on purpose to get them bushy, I took flies and all, and 
never saw one on any of my plants since, which I attribute 
to the economical and safe mode of wintering my stock. 
My indoor glass culture, or wintering of plants, is 
nothing different from the great bulk of other gardeners 
of long practice, only my conservatory is so small that I 
am obliged to have it warmer at bedtime on hard frosty 
nights than is good for the plants, to save me getting up 
by four or five o’clock in the morning to stir up the fire. 
But to make amends for that, I believe I keep my plants 
very much drier than regular gardeners ; and to tell the 
truth, I constantly keep breaking all the laws and com¬ 
mandments on that head, for my house is constantly 
much cooler during the day than it is at night during 
the whole of the winter, and yet my plants do pretty well. 
D. Beaton. 
MHSHEOOM CULTURE. 
As Mushrooms are a delicacy most people are fond of, although 
not so universally grown, I think, as they would be were their 
culture known to be so simple that any one possessing the con¬ 
venience of an outhouse or cellar, with a temperature of from 
48° to 55° and a little short dung, may grow them, I beg to offer 
a few remarks to those who may not yet have attempted their 
culture as to the way they may be produced in abundance with 
a very little care. 
In the first place, if short dung fresh from the stables is to be 
had so much the better; but I have grown abundance on beds 
made of short dung three months old. However, let it be w'hich 
it may, procure as much as will make a bed sixteen inches deep 
and any required size, throw the same together for a few days to 
heat and dispel the greater part of the moisture, then throw it 
down for a day or two to cool and dry, after w r hich again throw 
it up together for a few days—generally about five or six will 
bo found, sufficient. It will then be fit to make the bed with, 
which, let the size be what it may, should be about sixteen 
