218 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 15, 1861. 
bed, so made but with half the quantity of materials and covered 
•vrith six inches of earth, with Early Horn and small Dutch 
Carrots, and frame Radishes, and a few Cauliflower seeds. The 
Radishes will be thinned out if too thick to let the Carrots up, 
the Cauliflowers will be pricked out, but we make it a point to 
leave the Carrots very thick. As soon as they are half the size 
of a man’s thumb we shall begin to draw, and the quantity thus 
obtained from a two-light box is immense, and how nice and 
sweet and crisp they eat. The Radishes will succeed the Septem¬ 
ber and October sowings under glass protection, and will come 
in crisp when the older ones are getting hard and stringy. I have 
found for many years that such things sown in the first week of 
January, will beat, generally in time and always in quality, those 
sown a month or six weeks earlier. Asparagus has been un¬ 
covered when there was a bright sun, to get it a little green. In 
sunny weather Asparagus may be cut and placed in a hothouse 
or warm greenhouse to give it colour, but in the late dull weather 
that did little good. In resorting to that plan do not put the 
ends in water, that will make it tasteless and insipid ; but set 
the ends on damp moss and a little of the same moss an inch or 
two up the stems. A very cold house to place it in after being 
cut will be apt to make it eat tough and hard. The only thing 
else done out of doors, was protecting with straw the outside of 
several brick pits. We did not do it very thick as you may 
judge, when for three pits fully fifty feet long each, the back 
wall of one being four feet above the ground, and the other two 
three feet and a half, we covered the backs and ends with nine 
trusses of Wheat straw. The straw is put neatly against the wall, 
and secured in the highest pit by three strings and nails, and in 
the other two by two strings. Many people lose plants on cold 
pits because they think nothing of the walls. The frost will go 
much quicker through a nine-inch wall, than through a wall of 
dry earth of the same thickness. These pits will soon have less 
or more heat given them, and this slight defence of dry straw 
against the wall is a great advantage. It alike keeps cold out 
and heat in, and looks neat into the bargain. I have seen cn cold 
mornings when such pits were moderately warm inside, boys 
sticking their hands underneath the straw and finding thus a 
very comfortable warming-pan. In addition to this, the cold 
pits containing Geraniums, Calceolarias, &c., have been left to 
themselves, no uncovering, light, or air-giving; but the last thing 
in the evening and the first thing in the morning the covering 
was forked over, one man going along the back and another 
along the front merely breaking and changing the surface all 
along. Such straw-covering of walls as I have alluded to 
above, would not be half sufficient fora cold pit in such weather. 
I told many last year that they lost their plants, because with 
abundance of covering for their glass, they neglected the wall 
through which the frost easily penetrated. 
Inside a few Cucumber seeds were sown in a mild heat to 
bring on for bed, as we have given up having them in winter for 
some years, and I find that sown this month or the beginning of 
the next, they will beat those sown earlier. Strange to say, 
though generally successful with Cucumbers, I was not up to the 
mark last year, though Melons under much the same circum¬ 
stances did extra well. The late-house of Vines had the bunches 
cut with a piece of wood attached; but even then I never could 
keep them long so nice and plump as when hanging on the Vine. 
The Vines were pruned, washed with warm soap water, and 
when dry painted with a mixture of clay, sulphur, soft soap, 
and water, and then tied longitudinally along the front of the 
house inside, that they may be kept cool and equal in temperature 
at breaking time, and be out of the way before then. The walls 
are being cleaned to-day (January 8), and, ere long, the house 
will be ready for plants. I also generally smoke such 1 ouses 
before proving with the sulphur burning, but no green thing 
must be in the house. Potatoes just beginning to spring in a 
Mushroom-house, have been placed two or three in twelve-inch 
pots, and as soon as they get to the surface of the pot, they will 
be placed in light. These generally produce a few weeks earlier 
than those in beds. Plants in the houses have been carefully 
examined as to watering. With two or three exceptions in 
bright sun, and that only for a very short time, no air has been 
given. In such weather the doors and laps give quite enough. 
Provided the heating medium during the day is low and (ool, a 
little sun will not affect the houses much, and a little rise from 
sun heat does good, and never so much harm as letting in a 
draught of cold, dry, frosty air. A fine thing, indeed, to go to 
the expense of keeping Mr. Frost out, and then tell him to come 
in whenever the sun peers out for a quarter of an hour. Besides 
all these, flower-pots have been washed with warm water in a 
warm stokehole, and the pots kept in the warm until they were 
dried. Cuttings of many things have been put in, though in 
better weather we might have delayed a few weeks. Tallies have 
been made, sticks made and put into small bundles according to 
size. Spare sashes mended and painted, and straw covers 
repaired and new ones made. Something must be done with 
Strawberries to-morrow, but of that next week.—R. E. 
NEW SYSTEM OF HEATING PLANT-HOUSES. 
The first new move for the new year which I have 
heard, for the gardeners, was on Twelfthnight, and from 
one of our own number, a nobleman’s gardener, and 
one who is a first-class man, a Fellow of the Royal Hor¬ 
ticultural Society, and a right man in the right place at 
a Christmas party, where I then had the advantage of a 
hurried conversation with him on the questions of the 
season, the severe frost, the effects of it on the kitchen 
garden, the difficulty of obtaining seeds true to name, 
the unfitness of the Fluke Potato for the sandy soils of 
Surrey and Middlesex in the valley of the Thames, the 
education of gardeners, and the changes in the ideas of 
men of our calling from the days on which both of us 
had paid “half price” to seethe last half of Rob Roy 
acted in Inverness, Perth, and Edinburgh. “ But,” 
said he at last, “ why is it you never come to see my 
new heating scheme ? ” “ By-the-by, how has that 
system answered this hard weather P and how do you like 
it? and is your mind now settled on its working? for I 
should like very much to have a concise account of it for 
The Cottage Gabdener some of these days. But you 
great dons spend so much time at this season with your 
desserts, Diana Yernons, housekeepers, cooks, and 
factors, that you have no time or relish for writing for 
the good and guidance of others who are less fortunate 
and more busy than yourselves.” 
Well, he did tell me that his new scheme for heating 
was a remarkably good mode, the cheapest and best 
thing that had yet been done for heating plant-houses 
from which the frost is merely to be kept. I have not 
seen the arrangement yet, but I heard of it at the be¬ 
ginning of the frost of 1859; and this is the second season 
of the trial, and the first time that I have seen the 
author of it, at a Christmas merrymaking, since he hit on 
the plan. I book it thus early without references or 
premeditations, in order that he may hear more about it, 
and remember that when he is “asked” for the first 
time, let alone the legal run of asking, he cannot slip out 
of the engagement he made at that party. So here it is 
as far as I can recollect and arrange our conversation; 
but please to recollect the time and the circumstances 
under which the conversation took place, and that we 
were often interrupted and called to order and to other 
things during the course of it. 
Well, it is an entirely new edition of the Polmaise 
system of heating, but quite distinct and different from 
any variety of Polmaise proper. The groundwork of the 
Polmaise system of heating was and is the sucking back 
of the cold air in a house, to pass it through a heated 
furnace, and to return it to the same house on a higher 
level and hot enough to keep the house at the required 
temperature, and the whole air inside in motion all the 
time. Every practical man who gave a thought to that 
system, unless his thoughts were prejudged for him, cr 
prejudiced by some one or something else, acknowledged 
that Polmaise was the nearest to nature and to per¬ 
fection for heating and for ventilating plant-houses, of all 
the plans and methods hitherto in practice. But, after all, 
it was at last tacitly acknowledged also that the application 
of the principle was on a baseless foundation. 
This new system of my friend’s does not suck one par¬ 
ticle of air from a beautiful conservatory in which he 
works it. That conservatory is attached to a nobleman’s 
mansion. The size of it I hardly know, but I have seen it 
