The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-07-12
Hotbeds the Year Round.

Hotbcds and cold-frames, with the
accompanying complement of glass,
are necessity for the neutrality-suspicious.
who intends to do anything more than
farm gardening" Market-gardening
in the latitude north of New York City
cannot exist without these helps. 70
buy large quantities of vegetable plants
is expensive. while to raise the same
quantity is to have your own stock,
with some to sell as payment for the
trouble. There is no secret in hotbed
management; it wants good, well-made
sashcs, two-inch plank 10 rest them on,
and these sunk in the ground to keep
the manure from losing its heat in cold
winter weather. | buy sashes 3X6 feet;
set with double-thick English glass, size
6XS; tackled, puttied and bedded in
Pinch pine sash with horns : inches
long at each corner to carry them by.
Such sashes | have had in use fifteen
years, and they will last a lifetime
with good care; they rarely break;
dogs and cats walk over them, and they
sustain the weight of heavy SHOWS.
Other sizes of sashes, or glass, are the
index of ineXperience or ignorance.
Horse manure is the heating material
used, and one solid foot in depth of
this, smoking hot from the pile when
the bed is made, will force plants better
than anything else | have tried The
first week of February [ plant a seed
bed Of lettuce. Early in March | set
the plants out in hotbeds; these head
up to sell during May. Caulillowers or
cuCumbors are started for q second
crop--in places made vacant by the sale
of lettuce-from plants previously
raised for that purpose; the cucumbers
in pots, the caulilowers in beds pre-
pared for them. Cabbage seed is
planted about March l, pricked out the
last of the month in cold-frames, and
the cabbage bed planted to lettuce.
Tomatoes are pricked out to succeed
the early lettuce and cabbage, some
times; and sometimes lettuce, cabbage,
or tomato follow radish. Radish will
grow from the seed in iXweeks. Celery
and peppers remain in the hotbeds till
ready for the field.
Long radishes need at least eight
inches of soil over the manure, while
the round ones will grow in five or six
inches, as will lettuce. But if large
heads of lettuce are wanted they must
be set fifty plants to the sash in the
beds, and in earth foot deep; lettuce
needs cool head and warm feet, and
a deep soil for big heads, while a
shallow soil, with seventy-five plants to
the sash, is the rule for the early
forcing, small head lettuce, The
smaller heads will mature quicker,
,ybila hn h,o.
later in the season. The tomatoes are
pricked out into beds, two feet from
the earth to the glass, to allow the
plants to get in blossom before time to
set in the open ground. The glass in
the fall can again be put to good use
by using it to cover the lettuce set in
the beds, which will mature from
Thanksgiving to New Years, after
which time the beds lie idle till Febru-
airy, unless used to winter small lettuce
or cabbage plants for early setting in
the spring opening of the beds.
Water is necessity. Twenty-Five
sashes will in dry time require barrel
of water daily and often more Ny
supply comes from a tank filled by a
hand-pump and flows to the beds
through a rubber hose by the force of
gravity; one man can fill the tank and
then water until it is empty. The later
the season and the dryer the weather,
the more water is used, especially if
the sashes are taken of, which becomes
necessary after the middle of May.
Then the sun and drying winds dry the
beds rapidly. Cucumbers and cauli-
flowers then suffer if not abundantly
watered. To stop watering then means
to lose all the crop, and all past labor;
while continual watering may mean
cucumbers and caulillowers to sell for
less than the cost of production. This
is a dilemma with two horns. Half an
ounce of either cabbage, lettuce, or
tomato seed, sowed under one 3x6 glass,
will make 1900, 1000 and 800 good
plants respectively to prick out. sow
broadcast; but celery plant in rows
two inches apart and thin out as they
grow | transplant peppers from the
seed-bed direct to where they are to
grow,-W. w. Bull, in N. Y. Tribune.