THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, November 1, 1859. 
64 
ficially, and in December naturally, loses its flavour at 
once, "and is good for nothing afterwards. I proved that 
both ways myself. Apples I have seen frozen as hard as 
bullets, and they took very little hurt, in flavour, and none 
in the strength and flavour of the cider from them ; but 
how long they would keep after being so frosted I know 
not. How many degrees of frost a bunch of ripe Grapes 
will stand, and yet be fit for table, is, probably, not 
known to many British gardeners. I did not know how 
many degrees last week, but 10°, I am now in a position 
to assert, will not do the slightest harm to bunch, or 
berry, or bloom, or footstalk; the latter and the stalk 
of the bunch being much more tender and susceptible io 
frost than the berries. If the bunch is dry, the said 
stalks will just bear out against 10° of frost, and no more ; 
11° spoil their appearance, and 12° kill them, but not 
so as to cause the berries or Grapes to fall olf them. 
I had over forty bunches of fair average Grapes of the 
Esjperione under that trial on the morning of the 24th of 
October, 1859, and the Grapes are still as good as they 
were before that severe and early frost. So we gained 
something by it. Seven degrees of frost, or less, killed 
every Vine leaf that had life in it, the footstalks going 
with the blade flap down, but not separated from the 
wood ; the hinge which holds the stalk to the branch 
was not sufficiently ripe to part at the sudden fall of the 
leaf by frost.* Every particle of the unripe wood about 
the Vine was killed b} r the 10° of frost as completely as 
the green shoots of the Scarlet Geraniums, and the very 
green wood just as soon as those of the Geraniums ; for 
there was a large box of Scarlet Geraniums on the side of 
an upper window, with the Yine and the Grapes on each 
side of it. Some standards of these same Geraniums, 
which were three years old and upwards, are not killed 
in the old wood by the 12° of frost; but they had been very 
dry at the roots for some time. Seven degrees of frost 
killed one of my best plants last spring that was thirteen 
years old, and much harder in the old wood than the 
present plants ; but then it was in active growth, and full 
of sap ; also, was then regularly watered. All this shows 
that old Geraniums, with ail the green wood cut out of 
them, and being dry at the time, will stand 7° of frost 
without being killed. It would depend on the after ma¬ 
nagement, however, whether so much would injure them 
or not. 
One box of Cyclamens at the bottom of the garden was 
left there unprotected the first night of the frost, when 
there were 5° of it. The leaves thawed the next day, but 
were drooping. I left them the second night: as they 
were duplicates, I could afford to lose their leaves without 
a grudge, in order to see how much frost they could 
stand. They were all seedlings from Persicum, but by 
different parents or fathers. The second night scored 7° 
full, and the Cyclamens looked “done up,’’ the soil being 
as hard as a board. Then I put a five-dozen wine hamper 
over the box, and covered the hamper, so that a winter’s 
hardest frost could do no more damage ; and on Tuesday 
forenoon, as soon as the change of weather was unmis- 
takeable, I unburied and unpacked the hamper, and 
you never saw such pert, pricked-up ears, as those beauti- 
lully-marked leaves of these entombed Cyclamens pre¬ 
sented to view, as if nothing had happened. Yet the soil 
was still nearly as hard as when the box was covered. 
If there had been no thaw this box would remain 
frozen, dormant, and quite safe till next Christmas. 
Actual frost, if only one or two degrees of it, and absolute 
darkness, with no more frost, are as safe for keeping 
bedding plants for weeks together as hot water is in the 
hands of some people. When there is the appearance, 
therefore, of a continued frost, all the pits and frames and 
lights, which are kept by mere coverings, should be left 
* The same frost killed every leaf on the Black ITnmkiirtjlts in an orchard- 
house near 'Winchester ; hut the leaves on two Black Champions growing 
among them remain entirely uninjured. This more hardy and very 
superior Grape is not so much cultivated as it deserves to he.—Ens. C. G. 
uncovered the second or third afternoon till the glass is 
well frozen ; then cover as I did my Cyclamen-box, and 
do not uncover again till that frost is quite over, if it last 
a month—at least not more than to look in from time to 
time to see that the frost is not getting a-head inside, and 
till two or three days after the frost, if the sun is out; 
but as soon as possible if there is no sun, or likely to be 
that day. Then give a large current of air top and 
bottom of the lights, first turning every one of the lights 
upside down to dry them off before shuttirvg-up time in 
the afternoon. Frost within bounds—that is, anything 
from 32°, the freezing-point, down to 29°, or even 28°, is 
much more safe for the keeping of beddiug plants than 
sweating-like on the leaves, glass, and frames through 
sun heat and damp from stingy ventilation. Sooner than 
see my plants in this dew, as if of a morning at Mush¬ 
rooming in the fields, I would have all the lights off and 
wiped dry. I would also out with the plants ; at the 
same time scrape off the surface of the sand or ashes, 
wipe round the sides, and put on a dry surface of dusty 
ashes: then take the pots in their order of the tallest 
plants next tallest, and the lowest in front, and would 
wipe the pots as dry as a teapot, look out for worms and 
bad drainage and for pot-bound roots, which, to save 
watering and messing for a long while, I would double¬ 
pot—that is, put such a pot inside one just one size 
larger, in order to keep the roots from needing so many 
waterings in such weather. 
With fire and hot water there is no fear of damp. The 
great evil is often too much of a good thing—making or 
forcing on growth in the dead of winter for no earthly 
use but to be sure to give a world of trouble in the 
spring, when every leaf is liable to blights and flies ; and 
the plants so gentle and so delicate, as it were, that the 
proper amount of ventilation would send them on their 
beam ends in a twinkle. 
We noticed a deep pit in Capt. Hopkins’s garden, with 
a moveable bottom of open woodwork to stand the pots 
on. It rests on blocks of different sizes, according to the 
time and season. In winter it is deep down in the bottom 
of the pit, and a Joyce’s stove, with prepared fuel from 
Mr. Joyce himself, is put in at night, and has answered 
well for some years ; but when the frost is very hard he 
leaves the eighth of an inch open of the light under which 
the stove is placed for fear of too much foul air from the 
working of the stove, and he never loses a leaf. Another 
thing we saw there, and which the great pomolcgist 
highly prized, was a new (to us) invention for keeping 
flues and hot-water pipes from playing havoc with pot 
plants over them by drying them faster than one could 
water them—a sad mischief, and almost worse than frost 
in some cases, where there is no great distance between 
the top of the pipes or flue and the bottom of the open 
woodwork stage on which the pots stand. The stages 
stand on brackets let into the front wall; the leg of each 
bracket slopes down from the front of the stage to near 
the pipes, and rests in a notch in the brickwork of the 
front wall. How conceive all these sloping legs to be 
rafters for something else, and you have the plan in a 
moment. We all know how things slide up and down on 
rafters, and how rafters are parted in the middle for 
things to slip up and down on each side of each rafter; 
glass for light, canvass for shade, and wood to block out 
the heat of the pipes or flues from the bottom of the pots, 
and that is the thing. Very thin wooden sliding-lights 
work up and down each side of these legs of brackets 
when they ai'e quite down. All the heat as it rises must 
work up under these wooden lights, or shutters, right into 
the path first, then all over the house; but in very hard 
weather the frost might kill plants next the front glass, 
and the heat scorch as it escaped up by the side of the 
row of plants next the path: hence the necessity of 
sliding the shutter. In smart frost draw up the shutter 
four inches, say ; and a column of heat four inches across 
rises Tip against the front wall, front glass, and behind 
