THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Janfabt 8, 1861. 
204 
will have no chance to grow or elongate when close to freezing- 
point, that even if a thaw comes we shall be in no hurry un- 
'coTcring for several days. If the plants under such c rcum- 
stances have a night of several weeks they will be none the 
worse for it, especially if pretty dry beforehand. Cauliflower fit 
to cut, and in cold earth-pits covered with glass, and l.alf as 
much litter as the Calceolaria above referred to, have been, and 
are, all right, and along with Sea-kale, Turnip-tops, Rhubarb, 
.Mushrooms, &c., from the Mushroom-house, have been useful 
at /this season. Asparagus grown in a fermenting bed is too 
white to be pleasing to the eye, showing that to have it nice and 
green in all weathers in winter, it would be advisable to gr ow it 
where fire heat could be given. The plants in pots were care¬ 
fully watered where wanted, and in severe nights the pits and 
houses received a little protection from mats, and straw hurdles, 
which rendered strong fires unnecessary. All amateurs who like 
to see their little pet plants and bedding stock in all weathers, 
should manage to have their houses heated by some simple 
• means. I rather think it would be the cheapest and surest plan 
in all cases, using covering only in severe frost. Cold pits are, 
no doubt, the cheapest, where plenty of litter is to be had, but 
if that is to be obtained in some districts it will cost a great 
deal more than the little fuel that would be wanted. Verbenas 
that had been struck in the smallest 60-pots, as thick as the 
.cuttings would stand, have been transferred without moving the 
•drainage to 48’s, that the plants may get strong for cuttings in a 
month’s time. Vines in narrow pits have had a little heat 
applied ; and wheeling, making covers, and preparing for slight 
hotbeds, and keeping walks clean, have been the routine ope¬ 
rations, care being taken that the plant-houses were as ccol as 
compatible with safety.—R. P. 
THE SEASON—WINTERING PLANTS IN 
COLD PITS. 
The year 1860 went out of London through a flood of 
mud, and enveloped in a disagreeable mixture of Scotch 
mist and London fog. So 1861 came in, amid the same 
mixtures and conditions; yet Christmas was as sharp as 
in the old times. But look to the weather-glasses ; surely 
there are as many species in their genus as in any of the 
botanist’s making, and quite as true, for no two of them 
indicate the same degree of cold in the same street or 
garden. 
Your glass, of course, like mine, is quite right, and 
never varies, or was known to fail in a push like that of 
the last fortnight of the last old year, but everybody 
else’s glass is just like half the world now-a-days, and 
you know what they are without being told. No frost 
can now be booked without a debate about the exact 
species of “ glass,” the authority on which it is “ iden¬ 
tified,” the exact position it should hold in the “ arrange¬ 
ment” of this or that theorist, to say nothing of the 
dissertations on the subject whether the “ glass” be 
“ mercury” or a “ scale.” 
Here, in Surbiton, on the average of the las L ten 
years, we are three half degrees warmer during frosty 
weather than at Chiswick Gardens, unless the wind 
is fairly from the east, when we have the advantage 
over them of from three to five degrees, according, as it 
seems to me, to the force of the easterly wind. This 
Christmas frost with us was notch for notch with what 
they registered in Chiswick Garden, except on Christmas 
morning, when they were half a degree colder, but that, 
or as much more, might arise from the position o the 
thermometers and the way they were hung up. They 
count from a foot above the surface of a bare, exposed 
piece of ground. My glass is forty inches from the 
ground, to save me stooping so much, and the place is 
partly sheltered by garden-walls and houses in the 
neighbourhood. 
My aim has nothing to do with registering the weal her, 
but to know how to look after my plants, my col 1 pit 
being within a yard of my thermometer, which is 
Negretti A Zamba’s register. The frame of this instru¬ 
ment i3 a composition of metal,‘_which some of nay } liilo- 
sophical friends predicted would be liable to cause it to 
indicate too much cold; but that has not been the case 
hitherto, for I compare it weekly with Mr. Thomson’s 
tables at Chiswick. To indicate truly, this, and all other 
thermometers, ought to be suspended in free space, not 
leaning or touching against a wall or fence, or anything; 
and more particularly this that I use. The lowest point 
I noted was down to four degrees above zero, or twenty- 
eight degrees of frost, and then there were two inches 
depth of snow on my pit: under that not quite two 
inches of, say, common sawdust, so that all may under¬ 
stand the thing, which was really this cocoa-nut refuse 
you hear so much about. 
Well, two inches of dry sawdust over plants keep out 
more cold, or keep in more heat, than three new Russian 
mats ; and an inch of snow is a safer covering than two 
inches of dry sawdust. That hardest morning I swept a 
quantity of snow on against the front and ends of my 
pit, and threw a quantity more snow on the covering at 
the more exposed end. I am writing on the fourteenth 
day that my pit plants have been in total darkness, all 
but one light at one end, which I opened to see the state 
of the plants, and shut two hours afterwards. There was 
not a single leaf pinched, as far as I could see, and 
nothing could be more healthy-looking than the young 
leaves ; yet the first two courses of bricks under the glass 
at the back were frozen hard, having been hardly dry for 
the last six months before the frost. Boards, or turf, are 
far better for cold pits than bricks in England or stone in 
Scotland; and the turf off peaty moors or commons is 
just as much better than the turf from sandy loam. 
Now, you see a grain of practice is worth more than 
the adage puts to a bushel of theories ; and if I can keep 
three thousand seedlings in a cold pit without flue, or 
pipe, or heat in any shape, in such a frost as that and 
down to zero, as I have just done and told you, is there 
any reason why you and they could not do the same under 
similar circumstances now that you know the way to do 
it ? There are thousands who could see no reason why 
you should not thus succeed ; but I can see where many 
more thousands could no more keep) such plants than they 
could fly — they want my “grain” in their “bushel.” 
All the learning and all the education in the world will 
not avail a mail who wants a practical knowledge of what 
he takes in hand to do ; and as there is no way by which 
a man’s practice can be tested before he sets to work, all 
the tests of efficiency by education may turn out in empty 
bushels. No gardener, however, knows the value of 
education and the want of it better than I do. The best 
test of education, and the best lesson I heard on practical 
education for the last ten or twenty years, was that 
bursting of the boiler for the conservatory which “ R. F.” 
told U3 of last week. When energy, education, and 
practice go hand in glove, as they did in that instance, to 
keep off the frost or any other dangerous thing, you see 
; what is aimed at by those who would make scholars into 
| clever men, if the men had sufficient energy and fair 
practice to make their schooling bear on the nature of 
their calling : therefore, the first and great object which 
I would hold up for the aim of the amateur and young 
gardener is energy—that is, a prompt application of the 
mind and body to do everything on the instant, to do it 
as well as he can, and to try to learn something else from 
that doing. If you have to count the straws in a bundle, 
do it with all the force or spnrit you can put in motion, 
as if you were engaged in the greatest enterprise, and 
then you mqy not rise at first to the height of energy. 
If he cannot see a better way of counting the last straws 
in the bundle than he thought possible at the beginning, 
the energy of his mind was asleep the while, and a busy¬ 
body merely will never make a man of energy. It is just 
the same with education. The tongue may be taught to 
speak wisely, yet knowledge without energy is dead—or 
a great deal worse. Knowledge without energy will only 
make a man ten times more lazy: therefore practice to 
