210 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, December 30, 1850 
shy till it was too late; but I took up all the plauts, as 
you advised in The Cottage Gardener, and they are 
iiow growing away famously, and, I think, will be fine in 
the spring.” 
I have not heard how Mr. Ivinghorn’s Linums have 
done, and I must not bother a nurseryman with letters, 
for I should soon lose caste if I did, unless the occasion 
! was very pressing indeed. 
Any one of my three plants, in the hands of a good 
propagator, ought to turn out one hundred plants by 
next planting-out time; and I have seen the day when 
I should have insisted on the three being multiplied to 
the extent of one thousand plants in the time; hut I am 
not so fast now. Still, after having had to eat humble- 
pie and all that sort of thing about it, not forgetting the 
awful scrape of “ not believing one word ” of that which 
a clergyman said about it, surely no one would grudge 
me a good bed of it next year in the Experimental, and 
I may say that no one has ever had a fairer promise 
than I have just now. I had only five pods of seeds on 
the two plants which were allowed to bloom, and I fear 
I shall not have five seeds out of them all. Were it not 
for what Mr. Scott says I should have thought that my 
plants were only too late to seed, having been from a 
mid-May sowing. Now, however, I see no reason for 
trusting to home-grown seeds, or to be at the mercy of 
j the foreign market, as three or four plants can easily be 
kept in a cold frame over the winter, which would 
furnish sufficient cuttings for the largest establishment, 
and with no anxiety about the appearance of inferior 
flowers among them as at present. 
Let a good-sized, well-rooted plant of it be kept in 
store for the winter, and let it be kept in a cold pit or 
cool greenhouse, and you may calculate on forty or fifty 
plants from it in March and April, which will be suffi¬ 
cient till we come to learn more about it. 
CONSTRUCTION, COST, AND MANAGEMENT OF A 
PIT FOR WINTERING BEDDING-PLANTS. 
I was requested by “ H. C. K.,” at page 160, to add 
anything 1 thought proper to what he states there 
about the management of bedding-plants; but he is so 
thoroughly practical, and, like most of the really prac¬ 
tical amateurs, he writes so much better for amateurs 
than practical gardeners, that I find nothing to add or 
suggest on points of management. I have said already 
that his own flower-garden, and his way of planting it 
(see Yol. XVI., p. 395), were the best lesson on the subject 
in The Cottage Gardener, and I may now say the 
| same about the routine he has given us for keeping up 
' a stock of bedding-plants. His arrangements are 
| capital, and I have told already that some of the great 
gardeners follow his plan of putting only one cutting 
of certain Geraniums into a pot—at Hampton Court, 
and at the Stud House there, to wit. He uses 48-pots, 
j and they only 60’s; but by his method he is able to put 
in his cuttings from the middle to the end of June, while 
! very few gardeners can spare them from their beds for a 
i month or six weeks after that period. On a large scale 
; I am quite satisfied there is no cheaper mode than 
striking Geranium cuttings in the open air, and if they 
are in by the end of the first week in August they will 
make plants large enough for keeping over the winter. 
Still, if cuttings could be generally spared, the 1st of 
July would be a better time for them; and I agree that 
all the variegated, and such as are more dwarf than 
Tom Thumb, would do better in single pots over the 
winter, providing one could find room for so many pots; 
but if 1 could get such cuttings at the beginning of 
July 1 should be very loath to put them in pots so early. 
The chance of making so much more blood, muscle, 
and bone would outweigh with me the safety of winter¬ 
ing more established plants, as those in pots from the 
1st of July must necessarily be. 
It is comfortable thus to find the practice of the j 
gardener square so nearly with that of first-rate practical j 
amateurs, and I will now show you how nearly we j 
agree about pits for keeping such plants over the winter. I 
Last October we were pinched for room to winter the 
stock in the Experimental Garden, and after our plans 
were nearly settled the stock became suddenly increased 
to the extent of nearly one thousand Geraniums and a 
few other plants, all the contribution of two individuals, 
a duke and a private gardener. Seeing, therefore, that 
another pit must be got up all in a hurry, and so late in ( 
the season, we determined at once to have a brick pit, I 
and to have the bricks set in cement. For such low pits, 
which may be mulched round during frost, four inches 
thick are just as good as fourteen ; therefore, our pit is 
only a brick thick, and, being laid in cement, we did not 
require any pillars, nothing but four-inch concrete, a 
“ footing,” and four-inch work over. The back wall is 
three feet six inches high, including the footing; the 
front is eighteen inches high, and the width inside all 
but five feet. The ash-pit and fire-place are, as near as 
possible, like those of “ IT. C. K.; ” also a seven-feet | 
chimney for his nine leet, and in lieu of his brick flue 1 
we have three-inch glazed earthen pipes laid nearly | 
level along the front of the pit only. Our length is j 
twenty-five feet six inches, and seven lights three feet } 
six inches wide, and five feet six inches long. We have 
thus two lights more than “ H. C. K.” The rest is very 
nearly as he has them, even including the cinders and fine j 
coal-ashes on the top, but not with a back shelf yet; but 
we intend to have back shelves exactly as he has them 
in all our pits. There is a larger pit parallel with the 
back of the new pit, and three feet from it; but it is of 
the same length, and the bricklayer’s contract included 
another flue of pipes to heat the back pit from the same 
fire by turning the pipes across the farthest end of the 
new pit, then carrying them across underground, and into 
the front of the back pit. For all this the estimate of 
the bricklayer was only £8. The estimate for the lights 
was 7d. per square foot; they are of the very best red j 
deal, and glazed with 16 oz. sheet glass, in squares six 
inches by eight inches, six inches being the distance 
between the bars. There is a flat piece of stout iron 
across the centre of each light, to which the bars are 
fixed; and there are iron handles to the lights at the 
back. The seven lights cost .£3 17s. 6d. The frame or 
wall plates and rafters cost £3; and a stout frame and 
lid to cover the fire-place, with an oak post to rest the 
frame against when open, £1, all having three coats of 
paint. The last pound might have been spared, but 
the rest of the “ framing ground ” being tidy and very 
complete, we could hardly leave an open fire-place for 
the sake of saving one pound. 
The bill of costs ran thus :— 
£ s. d. 
A pit, 25 ft. 6 in. long, and 5ft. wide inside 8 0 0 
Seven lights, 5 ft. Gin. by 3 ft. Gin. 3 17 G 
Wall plates and rafters . 3 0 0 
Frame and lid over fire-place. 1 0 0 
15 17 6 
or, without the covering of the fire-place, a little more 
than £2 per light. Now, compare “ H. C. K.’s” account 
with this, and we see he paid too much for his lights, 
and we paid too much for the framework and rafters. 
We gave just double the price he gave, although we had 
only two more lights; but our carpenter is an “ old j 
hand” for the place, and when timber was at its highest 
price in 1855, he put up such another frame and rafter 
on a pit, which is somewhat larger, by which, he said, 
he was “ out of pocket;” and, although he was held to ! 
his contract, it was understood that “ it must be made 
up to him” next time. 
