House and Garden 
VoL. XTII MARCH, 1908 No. 3 
Forcing Fruits for Market in France 
By JACQUES BOYER 
T he art of producing flowers, fruits and vege¬ 
tables out of season was known by the 
Romans 2000 years ago. Certain gardeners 
of the Eternal City knew as well how to force the 
rose as to supply the tables of their contempo¬ 
rary sybarites with the first fruits and vegetables of 
the season. 
At the coldest season of the winter the Emperor 
Tiberius ate cucumbers daily, of which he was pas¬ 
sionately fond, and his successor, Caligula, also at the 
same season of the year served melons and ripe 
figs to his guests. Seneca in vain stigmatized the 
sensualism of those who, “by a fomentation of hot 
water and artificial heat made spring flowers blossom 
in the midst of frosts,” the rich patricians continued 
none the less to build the Cilician orchards, a kind of 
orangery heated by means of a furnace and which 
sheltered principally exotic trees or portable beds 
(horti pensiles) destined for the cultivation of aspar¬ 
agus, melons, artichokes, cardoon or other early fruits 
and vegetables appreciated by the Luculluses of the 
Peninsula. 
As much as one can judge by the incomplete de¬ 
scriptions of the Latin authors, these portable beds 
were boxes mounted upon wheels, which were exposed 
to the sun during the day, and put under shelter at 
night. As with the Cilician orchard, panes of isin¬ 
glass, alabaster or other transparent stones protected 
these boxes from the cold. Only rich amateurs 
could afford such luxuries. 
During the Middle Ages these methods of forced 
culture w^ere almost abandoned. Indeed only one 
chronicler is found, Jean de Beka, who alludes tothem. 
In one passage of the life of Albert the Great, this 
author tells that the illustrious Dominican gave in 
Cologne on the 6th of January 1249, ^ great banquet 
to William of Holland, and the biographer adds that 
by means of an art really magical, one saw in the 
banqueting halls, trees covered with fruits and rose 
bushes in blossom. 
Erom that period on the Arabs, more advanced in 
gardening than the Occidentals, conceived the idea 
of beds of manure to encourage the growth of their 
gourds, while the Erench gardeners invented only 
about the time of the Renaissance the economical 
process consisting of producing heat by the fermenta¬ 
tion of fresh manure. 
In 1600 Olivier de Serres points out the use of glass 
bells to cultivate melons, while half a century later, 
Andre Mollet was the first to exploit the idea of 
frames of glass to preserve heat and protect the plants 
without shutting out the light so indispensable to 
their development. 
After this the forced fruits were not long in appear¬ 
ing in Paris, and if we believe M. George Gibault, 
they cost exorbitant prices. 
The first litrons (a measure containing the six¬ 
teenth part of a French bushel) of peas which came to 
the capital of France cost 150 francs (^30.00) each, 
and the 14th of May, 1657, a plate of strawberries 
sold for 100 ecus, more than 600 francs of the pres¬ 
ent money (about ^120.00). 
The celebrated gardener of Louis XIV., La Quin- 
tinie, made the forcing of fruits and vegetables the 
style. In December he sent to his master, aspar¬ 
agus from the vegetable gardens of Versailles 
which the great king relished with the true taste of 
an epicurean. 
In the month of January came lettuce and radishes, 
then came cauliflowers in March; strawberries in the 
beginning of April, peas in May and melons at the end 
of June. His majesty so loved these succulent vege¬ 
tables that his doctors Fagon and Daquin ceased 
to find further trouble with the digestion of their 
august patient. 
Nor did Louis XIV. deprive himself of the pleasure 
of seeing his drawing-rooms decorated with forced 
flowers, such as hyacinths, anemones, narcissi or 
tulips that contemporary horticulturists forced into 
bloom at the very beginning of the year. 
Then during the eighteenth century the English 
and Flemish people added greatly to perfecting the 
growth of fruit-trees; they conceived the idea of stove 
heated tents with beds of tan-bark, while all over 
Europe, here and there, new hothouses were being 
constructed; as, for instance, those built under tbe 
direction of Frederick the Great in 1752, which one 
still sees at Potsdam. Also tourists visiting Great 
Britain, know the famous vine-stocks which, planted 
more than a hundred years ago, are still producing 
Copyriijht, lOUS, by The John G. ^yinston Co. . 
77 
