It is to assist the young gardener in this application of principles, to the growth of the Cucumber in the winter season, that these pages are designed; and of those who may differ from the opinions which are here expressed, it is only required that they should receive a calm and deliberate consideration--a consideration unbiassed by prejudice, and unmixed with any of that feverish excitement after novelties, which with gardeners, as well as with all other classes of society, is becoming far too prevalent, and intense.
ON THE STRUCTURES ADAPTED FOR THE GROWTH OF CUCUMBERS.
I will preface the following remarks on the structures adapted for the growth of Cucumbers, by stating, that a forcing house, a pit, and a common frame, present the means of bringing this fruit to its perfection, equally, one with the other, provided that a course of cultivation suitable to the structure, is followed out; the comparative merits of each, depend not so much on the nature of the results which may be obtained by adopting them, as on the facilities they afford for the attainment of those results.
The use of the common frame, and the ordinary hotbed of fermenting manure, nevertheless involves these difficulties:--the fermentation is liable to become excessive, and that in a very rapid manner, and also to decline as rapidly; the heat, when declining, cannot be speedily restored in unpropitious weather; it is materially checked in its action, by that particular state of the weather, which renders its efficient action most essential; it involves almost an infinitude of labour; and after all, it is uncertain in its action: when such difficulties as these, are overcome, Cucumbers can be grown to perfection, on dung beds, assisted by the common garden frame and sash.
The brick pit, when heated by fermenting manure, presents difficulties of the same nature with the preceeding, though in a less powerful degree: but when these structures are heated by means of hot water, in any of its various modes of application, there need be no irregularity, nor uncertainty in its action; because the supply of the elements of vegetable developement, and of the agents by whose aid they are applied, may, to a very great extent, go on uninterruptedly.