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Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) by L. H. Bailey

L >> L. H. Bailey >> Manual of Gardening (Second Edition)




[Illustration: Fig. 203. A low coldframe.]

Hotbeds.

A hotbed differs from a coldframe in being provided with bottom heat.
This heat is ordinarily supplied by means of fermenting manure, but it
may be obtained from other fermenting material, as tanbark or leaves, or
from artificial heat, as flues, steam pipes, or water pipes.

The hotbed is used for the very early starting of plants; and when the
plants have outgrown the bed, or have become too thick, they are
transplanted into cooler hotbeds or into coldframes. There are some
crops, however, that are carried to full maturity in the hotbed itself,
as radishes and lettuce.

The date at which the hotbed may be started with safety depends almost
entirely on the means at command of heating it and on the skill of the
operator. In the northern states, where outdoor gardening does not begin
until the first or the last of May, hotbeds are sometimes started as
early as January; but they are ordinarily delayed until early in March.

The heat for hotbeds is commonly supplied by the fermentation of horse
manure. It is important that the manure be as uniform as possible in
composition and texture, that it come from highly fed horses, and is
practically of the same age. The best results are usually secured with
manure from livery stables, from which it can be obtained in large
quantities in a short space of time. Perhaps as much as one half of the
whole material should be of litter or straw that has been used in
the bedding.

The manure is placed in a long and shallow square-topped pile, not more
than four or six feet high, as a rule, and is then allowed to ferment.
Better results are generally obtained if the manure is piled under
cover. If the weather is cold and fermentation does not start readily,
wetting the pile with hot water may start it. The first fermentation is
nearly always irregular; that is, it begins unequally in several places
in the pile. In order to make the fermentation uniform, the pile must be
turned occasionally, taking care to break up all hard lumps and to
distribute the hot manure throughout the mass. It is sometimes necessary
to turn the pile five or six times before it is finally used, although
half this number of turnings is ordinarily sufficient. When the pile is
steaming uniformly throughout, it is placed in the hotbed, and is
covered with the earth in which the plants are to be grown.

Hotbed frames are sometimes set on top of the pile of fermenting manure,
as shown in Fig. 204. The manure should extend some distance beyond the
edges of the frame; otherwise the frame will become too cold about the
outside, and the plants will suffer.

[Illustration: Fig. 204. Hotbed with manure on top of the ground.]

It is preferable, however, to have a pit beneath the frame in which the
manure is placed. If the bed is to be started in midwinter or very early
in the spring, it is advisable to make this pit in the fall and to fill
it with straw or other litter to prevent the earth from freezing deep.
When it is time to make the bed, the litter is thrown out, and the
ground is warm and ready to receive the fermenting manure. The pit
should be a foot wider on either side than the width of the frame. Fig.
205 is a cross-section of such a hotbed pit. Upon the ground a layer of
an inch or two of any coarse material is placed to keep the manure off
the cold earth. Upon this, from twelve to thirty inches of manure is
placed. Above the manure is a thin layer of leafmold or some porous
material, that will serve as a distributor of the heat, and above this
is four or five inches of soft garden loam, in which the plants are
to be grown.

[Illustration: Fig. 205. Section of a hotbed built with a pit.]

It is advisable to place the manure in the pit in layers, each stratum
to be thoroughly trodden down before another one is put in. These layers
should be four to eight inches in thickness. By this means the mass is
easily made uniform in consistency. Manure that has too much straw for
the best results, and which will therefore soon part with its heat, will
spring up quickly when the pressure of the feet is removed. Manure that
has too little straw, and which therefore will not heat well or will
spend its heat quickly, will pack down into a soggy mass underneath the
feet. When the manure has sufficient litter, it will give a springy
feeling to the feet as a person walks over it, but will not fluff up
when the pressure is removed. The quantity of manure to be used will
depend on its quality, and also on the season in which the hotbed is
made. The earlier the bed is made, the larger should be the quantity of
manure. Hotbeds that are intended to hold for two months should have
about two feet of manure, as a rule.

The manure will ordinarily heat very vigorously for a few days after it
is placed in the bed. A soil thermometer should be thrust through the
earth down to the manure, and the frame kept tightly closed. When the
temperature is passing below 90 deg., seeds of the warm plants, like
tomatoes, may be sown, and when it passes below 80 deg. or 70 deg., the seeds of
cooler plants may be sown.

If hotbeds are to be used every year, permanent pits should be provided
for them. Pits are made from two to three feet deep, preferably the
former depth, and are walled up with stone or brick. It is important
that they be given good drainage from below. In the summer-time, after
the sash are stripped, the old beds may be used for the growing of
various delicate crops, as melons or half-hardy flowers. In this
position, the plants can be protected in the fall. As already suggested,
the pits should be cleaned out in the fall and filled with litter to
facilitate the work of making the new bed in the winter or spring.

[Illustration: Fig. 206 Parallel runs of hotbeds with racks for holding
sashes.]

Various modifications of the common type of hotbed will suggest
themselves to the operator. The frames should ordinarily run in parallel
rows, so that a man walking between them can attend to the ventilation
of two rows of sash at once. Fig. 206 shows a different arrangement.
There are two parallel runs, with walks on the outside, and between them
are racks to receive the sash from the adjacent frames. The sash from
the left-hand bed are run to the right, and those from the right-hand
bed are run to the left. Running on racks, the operator does not need to
handle them, and the breakage of glass is therefore less; but this
system is little used because of the difficulty of reaching the farther
side of the bed from the single walk.

If the hotbed were high enough and broad enough to allow a man to work
inside, we should have a forcing-house. Such a structure is shown in
Fig. 207, upon one side of which the manure and soil are already in
place. These manure-heated houses are often very efficient, and are a
good make-shift until such time as the gardener can afford to put in
flue or pipe heat.

[Illustration: Fig. 207. Manure-heated greenhouse.]

Hotbeds may be heated by means of steam or hot water. They can be piped
from the heater in a dwelling-house or greenhouse. Fig. 208 shows a
hotbed with two pipes, in the positions 7, 7 beneath the bed. The earth
is shown at 4, and the plants (which, in this case, are vines) are
growing upon a rack, at 6. There are doors in the end of the house,
shown in 2, 2, which may be used for ventilation or for admitting air
underneath the beds. The pipes should not be surrounded by earth, but
should run through a free air space.

[Illustration: Fig. 208. Pipe-heated hotbed.]

It would scarcely pay to put in a hot water or steam heater for the
express purpose of heating hotbeds, for if such an expense were
incurred, it would be better to make a forcing-house. Hotbeds may be
heated, however, with hot-air flues with very good results. A home-made
brick furnace may be constructed in a pit at one end of the run and
underneath a shed, and the smoke and hot air, instead of being carried
directly upwards, is carried through a slightly rising horizontal pipe
that runs underneath the beds. For some distance from the furnace, this
flue may be made of brick or unvitrified sewer pipe, but stove-pipe may
be used for the greater part of the run. The chimney is ordinarily at
the farther end of the run of beds. It should be high, in order to
provide a good draft. If the run of beds is long, there should be a rise
in the underlying pipe of at least one foot in twenty-five. The greater
the rise in this pipe, the more perfect will be the draft. If the runs
are not too long, the underlying pipe may return underneath the beds and
enter a chimney directly over the back end of the furnace, and such a
chimney, being warmed from the furnace, will ordinarily have an
excellent draft. The underlying pipe should occupy a free space or pit
beneath the beds, and whenever it lies near to the floor of the bed or
is very hot, it should be covered with asbestos cloth. While such
flue-heated hotbeds may be eminently successful with a grower or builder
of experience, it may nevertheless be said, as a general statement, that
whenever such trouble and expense are incurred, it is better to make a
forcing-house. The subject of forcing-houses and greenhouses is not
discussed in this book.

[Illustration: Fig. 209. Useful kinds of watering-pots. These are
adapted to different uses, as are different forms of hoes or
pruning tools.]

The most satisfactory material for use in hotbed and cold-frame sash is
double-thick, second-quality glass; and panes twelve inches wide are
ordinarily broad enough, and they suffer comparatively little in
breakage. For coldframes, however, various oiled papers and waterproof
cloths may be used, particularly for plants that are started little in
advance of the opening of the season. When these materials are used, it
is not necessary to have expensive sash, but rectangular frames are made
from strips of pine seven-eighths inch thick and two and one-half inches
wide, halved together at the corners and each corner reenforced by a
square carriage-corner, such as is used by carriage-makers to secure the
corners of buggy boxes. These corners can be bought by the pound at
hardware stores.

Management of hotbeds.

Close attention is required in the management of hotbeds, to insure that
they do not become too hot when the sun comes out suddenly, and to give
plenty of fresh air.

Ventilation is usually effected by raising the sash at the upper end and
letting it rest upon a block. Whenever the temperature is above freezing
point, it is generally advisable to take the sash off part way, as shown
in the central part of Fig. 199, or even to strip it off entirely, as
shown in Fig. 197.

Care should be taken not to water the plants at nightfall, especially in
dull and cold weather, but to give them water in the morning, when the
sun will soon bring the temperature up to its normal state. Skill and
judgment in watering are of the greatest importance in the management of
hotbeds; but this skill comes only from thoughtful practice. The
satisfaction and effectiveness of the work are greatly increased by good
hose connections and good watering-pots (Fig. 209).

Some protection, other than the glass, must be given to hotbeds. They
need covering on every cold night, and sometimes during the entire day
in very severe weather. Very good material for covering the sash is
matting, such as is used for covering floors. Old pieces of carpet may
also be used. Various hotbed mattings are sold by dealers in
gardeners' supplies.

[Illustration: Fig. 210. The making of straw mats.]

Gardeners often make mats of rye straw, although the price of good straw
and the excellence of manufactured materials make this home-made matting
less desirable than formerly. Such mats are thick and durable, and are
rolled up in the morning, as shown in Fig. 199. There are various
methods of making these straw mats, but Fig. 210 illustrates one of the
best. A frame is made after the manner of a saw-horse, with a double
top, and tarred or marline twine is used for securing the strands of
straw. It is customary to use six runs of this warp. Twelve spools of
string are provided, six hanging on either side. Some persons wind the
cord upon two twenty-penny nails, as shown in the figure, these nails
being held together at one end by wire which is secured in notches filed
into them. The other ends of the spikes are free, and allow the string
to be caught between them, thus preventing the balls from unwinding as
they hang upon the frame. Two wisps of straight rye straw are secured
and laid upon the frame, with the butt ends outward and the heads
overlapping. Two opposite spools are then brought up, and a hard knot is
tied at each point. The projecting butts of the straw are then cut off
with a hatchet, and the mat is allowed to drop through to receive the
next pair of wisps. In making these mats, it is essential that the rye
contains no ripe grain; otherwise it attracts the mice. It is best to
grow rye for this especial purpose, and to cut it before the grain is in
the milk, so that the straw does not need to be threshed.

In addition to these coverings of straw or matting, it is sometimes
necessary to provide board shutters to protect the beds, particularly if
the plants are started very early in the season. These shutters are made
of half-inch or five-eighths-inch pine lumber, and are the same size as
the sash--three by six feet. They may be placed upon the sash underneath
the matting, or they may be used above the matting. In some cases they
are used without any matting.

In the growing of plants in hotbeds, every effort should be made to
prevent the plants from growing spindling, or becoming "drawn." To make
stocky plants, it is necessary to give room to each plant, to be sure
that the distance from the plants to the glass is not great, to provide
not too much water in dull and cold weather, and particularly to give
abundance of air.



CHAPTER VI

PROTECTING PLANTS FROM THINGS THAT PREY ON THEM

Plants are preyed on by insects and fungi; and they are subject to
various kinds of disease that, for the most part, are not yet
understood. They are often injured also by mice and rabbits (p. 144), by
moles, dogs, cats, and chickens; and fruit is eaten by birds. Moles may
be troublesome on sandy land; they heave the ground by their burrowing
and may often be killed by stamping when the burrow is being raised;
there are mole traps that are more or less successful. Dogs and cats
work injury mostly by walking across newly made gardens or lying in
them. These animals, as well as chickens, should be kept within their
proper place (p. 160); or if they roam at will, the garden must be
inclosed in a tight wire fence or the beds protected by brush laid
closely over them.

The insects and diseases that attack garden plants are legion; and yet,
for the most part, they are not very difficult to combat if one is
timely and thorough in his operations. These difficulties may be divided
into three great categories: the injuries wrought by insects; the
injuries of parasitic fungi; the various types of so-called
constitutional diseases, some of which are caused by germs or bacteria,
and many of which have not yet been worked out by investigators.

The diseases caused by parasitic fungi are usually distinguished by
distinct marks, spots or blisters on the leaves or stems, and the
gradual weakening or death of the part; and, in many cases, the leaves
drop bodily. For the most part, these spots on the leaves or stems
sooner or later exhibit a mildew-like or rusty appearance, due to the
development of the spores or fruiting bodies. Fig. 211 illustrates the
ravages of one of the parasitic fungi, the shot-hole fungus of the plum.
Each spot probably represents a distinct attack of the fungus, and in
this particular disease these injured parts of tissue are liable to fall
out, leaving holes in the leaf. Plum leaves that are attacked early in
the season by this disease usually drop prematurely; but sometimes the
leaves persist, being riddled by holes at the close of the season. Fig.
212 is the rust of the hollyhock. In this case the pustules of the
fungus are very definite on the under side of the leaf. The blisters of
leaf-curl are shown in Fig. 213. The ragged work of apple scab fungus is
shown in Fig. 214.

[Illustration: Fig. 211. Shot-hole disease of plum.]

[Illustration: Fig. 212. Hollyhock rust.]

[Illustration: Fig. 213. Leaf-curl of peach, due to a fungus.]

The constitutional and bacterial diseases usually affect the whole
plant, or at least large portions of it; and the seat of attack is
commonly not so much in the individual leaves as in the stems, the
sources of food supply being thereby cut off from the foliage. The
symptoms of this class of diseases are general weakening of plant when
the disease affects the plant as a whole or when it attacks large
branches; or sometimes the leaves shrivel and die about the edges or in
large irregular discolored spots, but without the distinct pustular
marks of the parasitic fungi. There is a general tendency for the
foliage on plants affected with such diseases to shrivel and to hang on
the stem for a time. One of the best illustrations of this type of
disease is the pear-blight. Sometimes the plant gives rise to abnormal
growths, as in the "willow shoots" of peaches affected with yellows
(Fig. 215).

[Illustration: Fig. 214. Leaves and fruits injured by fungi, chiefly
apple-scab.]

Another class of diseases are the root-galls. They are of various kinds.
The root-gall of raspberries, crown-gall of peaches, apples, and other
trees, is the most popularly recognized of this class of troubles (Fig.
216). It has long been known as a disease of nursery stock. Many states
have laws against the sale of trees showing this disease. Its cause was
unknown, until in 1907 Smith and Townsend, of the Bureau of Plant
Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, undertook an
investigation. They proved that it is a bacterial disease (caused by
_Bacterium tumefaciens_); but just how the bacteria gain entrance to the
root is not known. The same bacterium may cause galls on the stems of
other plants, as, for example, on certain of the daisies. The
"hairy-root" of apples, and certain galls that often appear on the
limbs of large apple-trees, are also known to be caused by this same
bacterium. The disease seems to be most serious and destructive on the
raspberry, particularly the Cuthbert variety. The best thing to be done
when the raspberry patch becomes infested is to root out the plants and
destroy them, planting a new patch with clean stock on land that has not
grown berries for some time. Notwithstanding the laws that have been
made against the distribution of root-gall from nurseries, the evidence
seems to show that it is not a serious disease of apples or peaches, at
least not in the northeastern United States. It is not determined how
far it may injure such trees.

[Illustration: Fig. 215. The slender tufted growth indicating peach
yellows. The cause of this disease is undetermined.]

[Illustration: Fig. 216. Gall on a raspberry root.]

Of obvious insect injuries, there are two general types,--those wrought
by insects that bite or chew their food, as the ordinary beetles and
worms, and those wrought by insects that puncture the surface of the
plant and derive their food by sucking the juices, as scale-insects and
plant-lice. The canker-worm (Fig. 217) is a notable example of the
former class; and many of these insects may be dispatched by the
application of poison to the parts that they eat. It is apparent,
however, that insects which suck the juice of the plant are not poisoned
by any liquid that may be applied to the surface. They may be killed by
various materials that act upon them externally, as the soap washes,
miscible oils, kerosene emulsions, lime-and-sulfur sprays, and the like.

[Illustration: Fig. 217. Canker-worm.]

There has been much activity in recent years in the identification and
study of insects, fungi, and microorganisms that injure plants; and
great numbers of bulletins and monographs have been published; and yet
the gardener who has tried assiduously to follow these investigations is
likely to go to his garden any morning and find troubles that he cannot
identify and which perhaps even an investigator himself might not
understand. It is important, therefore, that the gardener inform himself
not only on particular kinds of insects and diseases, but that he
develop a resourcefulness of his own. He should be able to do something,
even if he does not know a complete remedy or specific. Some of the
procedure, preventive and remedial, that needs always to be considered,
is as follows:--

Keep the place clean, and free from infection. Next to keeping the
plants vigorous and strong, this is the first and best means of averting
trouble from insects and fungi. Rubbish and all places in which the
insects can hibernate and the fungi can propagate should be done away
with. All fallen leaves from plants that have been attacked by fungi
should be raked up and burned, and in the fall all diseased wood should
be cut out and destroyed. It is important that diseased plants are not
thrown on the manure heap, to be distributed through the garden the
following season.

Practice a rotation or alternation of crops (p. 114). Some of the
diseases remain in the soil and attack the plant year after year.
Whenever any crop shows signs of root disease, or soil disease, it is
particularly important that another crop be grown on the place.

[Illustration: Fig. 218. A garden hand syringe.]

See that the disease or insect is not bred on weeds or other plants that
are botanically related to the crop you grow. If the wild mallow, or
plant known to children as "cheeses" _(Malva rotundifolia_), is
destroyed, there will be much less difficulty with hollyhock rust. Do
not let the cabbage club-root disease breed on wild turnips and other
mustards, or black-knot on plum sprouts and wild cherries, or
tent-caterpillars on wild cherries and other trees.

[Illustration: Fig. 219. A knapsack pump.]

Always be ready to resort to hand-picking. We have grown so accustomed
to killing insects by other means that we have almost forgotten that
hand-picking is often the surest and sometimes even the most expeditious
means of checking an invasion in a home garden. Many insects can be
jarred off early in the morning. Egg-masses on leaves and stems may be
removed. Cutworms may be dug out. Diseased leaves may be picked off and
burned; this will do much to combat the hollyhock rust, aster rust, and
other infections.

[Illustration: Fig. 220 A compressed-air hand pump for garden work.]

[Illustration: Fig. 221 A bucket pump.]

[Illustration: Fig. 222 A bucket pump.]

[Illustration: Fig. 223 A cart-mounted pump.]

Keep close watch on the plants, and be prepared to strike quickly. It
should be a matter of pride to a gardener to have in his workhouse a
supply of the common insecticides and fungicides (Paris green or
arsenate of lead, some of the tobacco preparations, white hellebore,
whale-oil soap, bordeaux mixture, flowers of sulfur, carbonate of Copper
for solution in ammonia), and also a good hand syringe (Fig. 218), a
knapsack pump (Figs. 219, 220), a bucket pump (Figs. 221, 222), a hand
bellows or powder gun, perhaps a barrow outfit (Figs. 223, 224, 225),
and if the plantation is large enough, some kind of a force pump (Figs.
226, 227, 228). If one is always ready, there is little danger from any
insect or disease that is controllable by spraying.

[Illustration: Fig. 224. A garden outfit.]

[Illustration: Fig. 225. A cart-mounted barrel pump.]

[Illustration: Fig. 226. A barrel hand pump.]

[Illustration: Fig. 227. A barrel outfit, showing nozzles on extension
rods for trees.]

_Screens and covers._

There are various ways of keeping insects away from plants. One of the
best is to cover the plants with fine mosquito-netting or to grow them
in hand-frames, or to use a wire-covered box like that shown in Fig.
229. In growing plants under such covers, care must be taken that the
plants are not kept too close or confined; and in cases in which the
insects hibernate in the soil, these boxes, by keeping the soil warm,
may cause the insects to hatch all the sooner. In most cases, however,
these covers are very efficient, especially for keeping the striped bugs
off young plants of melons and cucumbers.

[Illustration: Fig. 228. A truck-mounted barrel hand spray Pump.]

Cut-worms may be kept away from plants by placing sheets of tin or of
heavy glazed paper about the stem of the plant, as shown in Fig. 230.
Climbing cut-worms are kept off young trees by the means shown in Fig.
231. Or a roll of cotton may be placed about the trunk of the tree, a
string being tied on the lower edge of the roll and the upper edge of
the cotton turned down like the top of a boot; the insects cannot crawl
over this obstruction (p. 203).

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Turkey is restoring the citizenship of its most famous 20th century poet Nazim Hikmet over 50 years after it branded him a traitor.

Hikmet, a communist who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, was imprisoned in Turkey for more than a decade. He was stripped of his Turkish nationality in 1951 because of his communist views, but despite a ban on his poetry which remained in place until 1965, has remained one of Turkey's best-loved poets. His work, much of which was written in prison, including his masterpiece Human Landscapes, has been translated into more than 50 languages.

"This is very good news," said Richard McKane, Hikmet's English translator. "The restoration of his Turkish citizenship is long overdue: the people of Turkey and his readers are owed that."

Immortalised by Pablo Neruda, with whom he shared the Soviet Union's International Peace Prize in 1950, with the lines "Thanks for what you were and for the fire / which your song left forever burning", Hikmet was also supported by Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso. Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, when given the editorship for a day of Turkish newspaper Radikal two years ago, used the example of Hikmet in his cover story to criticise the lack of freedom of expression in Turkey. In 2000, 500,000 Turks petitioned the government to restore Hikmet's citizenship rights and repatriate his remains.

Deputy prime minister Cemil Cicek told the Associated Press that it was time for the government to change its mind about Hikmet. "The crimes which forced the government to strip him of his citizenship at that time are no longer considered a crime," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Hikmet, whose remains are currently in Russia, had said that he wished to be buried in Turkey in his 1953 poem Testament, translated by Ruth Christie. "Friends if it's not my lot to see the day / of independence... / if I die before that day / - and it seems I will - / bury me in a village graveyard in Anatolia / and if it's fitting / and a plane tree grows at my head, / then there's no need for a gravestone or anything else."

Cicek said that Hikmet's family would now decide whether to ship his remains back to his homeland.

Hikmet introduced free verse to Turkey in the 1930s, with his themes ranging from war to love. Despite his imprisonment he retained a deep passion for Turkey. "I love my country", he wrote in one of his poems. "I swung in its lofty trees, I lay in its prisons. Nothing relieves my depression like the songs and tobacco of my country."

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