Part 3
_General Management._ About the middle of February, he “puts in as much hot dung or horse-litter as will raise the bed about a foot high, and then lays on the tanner’s bark as equally as possible, till the case of brick-work is filled, beating down the tan gently with a prong, or pressing it down easily with a board. A bed of this kind will take up three hundred bushels of tan, and if it be well made, will heat in about fifteen days, provided the frame and glasses are set over it. When the bed breathes a right heat, which we are to judge of by a thermometer, the plants are brought from the stove to it, either to have their pots quite plunged into the bark; or, if upon opening the holes for them, the bark be found too hot, then to be set in only half way, laying a few pebbles under the bottom of each pot, that the water may pass freely through them. Care must be taken not to remove the pots in frost or snow; and to examine the bed from time to time, whether the bark grows mouldy, musty, or dry, which it will often do in the summer: in such case, it must be watered to recover its heat. A bed thus prepared and managed will maintain a constant degree of heat, sufficient to give these plants the utmost vigour they require, from the end of February to the end of October; and then the plants must be again removed into the stove or conservatory. In excessive heats the glasses are tilted up at the back of the frame; and when the evenings are cool, the bed must be carefully covered with substantial mattresses of straw. A bed of this kind sinks about a foot, which is convenient; for otherwise the plants would be too tall for the frame, before the time of housing them.
“The thermometer used by Mr. Telende had a tube twenty-four inches long, and one-eighth of an inch in diameter. When the spirit rose only to fifteen inches, he accounted the air cold for his plants; at sixteen and a half temperate; at eighteen warm, which was his standard for Pine Apple heat; at twenty inches, hot air; and at twenty-one inches, sultry.”
_Insects._ Nothing is said on this subject.
_Fruit produced._ Mr. Cowel says (_Curious and Profitable Gardener_, p. 27.) that all gentlemen who had eaten Pines abroad allowed those raised by Mr. Telende to be as good and as large as they found in the West Indies. Bradley says, forty Pines were likely to ripen in the autumn of 1724.
SECT. II.
_Of the Culture of the Pine, as given by Phillip Miller in his Gardener’s Dictionary._
_Form of House._ It was formerly the practice, Miller observes, to build dry stoves, in which the plants were kept in winter, placed on scaffolds, after the manner in which orange-trees are placed in a green-house; and in summer, in hot-beds of tanners’ bark, under frames. But it is now the practice, he adds, to erect low stoves, called the succession-house, with pits therein for the hot-bed. It is also necessary to have a bark-pit under a deep frame, for bringing forward the suckers and crowns to supply the succession-house.
Mr. Miller’s fruiting-house has upright glasses in front, high enough to admit a person to walk upright on the walk in front of the house. Over the upright glasses there must be a range of sloping glasses, “which must run to join the roof, which should come so far from the back wall as to cover the flues and the walk behind the tan-pit; for if the sloping glasses are of length sufficient to reach nearly over the bed, the plants will require no more light: therefore these glasses should not be longer than is absolutely necessary, that they may be the more manageable.”
The difference between this stove and that of Speechly is, that in the latter the sloping sashes reach to the back wall, by which means, instead of a useless opaque roof over the path, an excellent place is formed for training a vine; and this being at all times the hottest part of the house, such vines as are there trained will produce very early and high-flavoured fruit.
The succession-house of Miller has no upright glass, and only a walk at the back of the house: the bark-pit may be partly sunk in the ground, if the situation be dry; or if wet, kept above it. The flue makes three returns against the back wall, beginning from the level of the walk. Many persons, he says, have made tan-beds, with two flues running through the back wall, and covered with glasses, like common hot-beds; but, besides the inconvenience of taking off the glasses when the plants want water, the damps rise in winter when the glasses are closely shut, and there is danger of the tan taking fire.
The improvement on this plan consists in detaching the flue from the back wall, and separating it from the tan by a vacuity of two or three inches; or, what is still better, placing the flue in front similarly detached, and surrounded by air on all sides.
_Soil._ “As to the earth in which Pines should be planted, if you have a rich good kitchen-garden mould, not too heavy, so as to detain the moisture too long, nor over light and sandy, it will be very proper for them without any mixture: but where this is wanting, you should procure some fresh earth from a good pasture, which should be mixed with about a third part of rotten neats’ dung, or the dung of an old melon or cucumber bed, which is well consumed. These should be mixed six or eight months at least before they are used, but if it be a year, it will be the better; and should be often turned, that their parts may be the better united, as also the clods well broken. This earth should not be screened very fine, but only cleared of the great stones. You should always avoid mixing any sand with the earth, unless it be extremely stiff, and then it will be necessary to have it mixed at least six months or a year before it is used: and it must be frequently turned, that the sand may be incorporated in the earth, so as to divide its parts; but you should not put more than a sixth part of sand, for too much is very injurious to these plants.
_General Management._ “There are some persons who frequently shift these plants from pot to pot; but this is by no means to be practised by those who propose to have large well-flavoured fruit: for unless the pots be filled with the roots by the time the plants begin to show their fruit, they commonly produce small fruit, which have generally large crowns on them; therefore the plants will not require to be potted oftener than twice in a season. The first time should be about the end of April, when the suckers and crowns of the former year’s fruit (which remained all the winter in those pots in which they were first planted) should be shifted into larger pots. The second time for shifting them is in the beginning of August, when you should shift those plants which are of a proper size for fruiting the following spring. At each of these times of shifting the plants, the bark-bed should be stirred up, and some new bark added, to raise the bed up to the height it was at first made; and when the pots are plunged again into the bark-bed, the plants should be watered gently all over their leaves, to wash off the filth, and to settle the earth to the roots of the plants. If the bark-bed be well stirred, and a quantity of good fresh bark added to the bed, at this latter shifting, it will be of great service to the plants; and they may remain in the same tan until the beginning of November, or sometimes later, according to the mildness of the season.
“In the summer season, when the weather is warm, the plants must be frequently watered; but you should not give them large quantities at a time: you must also be very careful that the moisture is not detained in the pots by the holes being stopped, for that will soon destroy the plants. In very warm weather they should be watered twice or three times a week; but in a cool season, once a week will be often enough; and during the summer season, you should once a week water them gently all over their leaves, which will wash the filth from off them, and thereby greatly promote the growth of the plants. During the winter season, these plants will not require to be watered oftener than once a week, according as you find the earth in the pots to dry: nor should you give them too much at each time; for it is much better to give them a little water often than to over-water them, especially at this season.”
_Insects._ After describing the white scale or mealy pine-bug (_coccus hesperidum_, L.) he says, “wherever these insects appear on the plants, the safest method will be to take the plants out of the pots, and clear the earth from the roots; then prepare a large tub, which should be filled with water, in which there has been a strong infusion of tobacco-stalks; into this tub you should put the plants, placing some sticks across the tub, to keep the plants immersed in water. In this water they should remain twenty-four hours; then take them out, and with a sponge wash off all the insects from the leaves and roots, which may be easily effected when the insects are killed by the infusion; then cut off all the small fibres of the roots, and dip the plants into a tub of fair water, washing them therein. Then you should pot them in fresh earth, and having stirred up the bark-bed, and added some new tan to give a fresh heat to the bed, the pots should be plunged again, observing to water them all over the leaves (as was before directed), and this should be repeated once a week during the summer season; for I observe these insects always multiply much faster where the plants are kept dry, than in such places where the plants are sometimes sprinkled over with water, and kept in a growing state. And the same is also observed in America; for it is in long droughts that the insects make such destruction in the sugar-canes. And in those islands, where they have had several very dry seasons, they have increased to such a degree as to destroy the greatest part of the canes in the islands, rendering them not only unfit for sugar, but poison the juice of the plant, so as to disqualify it for making rum; whereby many planters have been ruined.
“As these insects are frequently brought over from America on the ananas plants, those persons who procure their plants from thence should look carefully over them when they receive them, to see they have none of these insects on them; for if they have, they will soon be propagated over all the plants in the stove where these are placed: therefore, whenever they are observed, the plants should be soaked (as was before directed) before they are planted into pots.”
_Fruit produced._ Miller finds suckers and crowns, if equal in size and strength, fruit equally soon; and has seen as good fruit produced from plants received from the West Indies, as from any he has seen, and some three times larger than any he saw in M. Le Cour’s garden.
SECT. III.
_Culture of the Pine Apple, by James Justice, Esq. F.R.S. at Crichton, near Edinburgh, in 1732, and for some years afterwards._
This gentleman was one of the greatest amateurs of gardening of his time, and a most successful cultivator of every thing he attempted. He had a fine garden at Crichton, near Edinburgh, and corresponded with various foreign horticulturists of Holland and Italy, as well as with Miller, Bradley, and other eminent English gardeners of his time.
_Form of House._ Justice, writing in 1754, says, “There have of late years been erected in England and Scotland, many sorts of stoves for the culture of the Pine Apple; but I am sure, after many experiments, that the plan here annexed is the best. In this stove, (fig. 5.) with one fire, I can do the business of two stoves, which must have two fires, and cultivate the old as well as the young plants.” The front and ends of this house are of glass, as well as the roof; the flue enters from behind at one end, passes along the middle of the house, returns on itself, and then makes four returns in the back wall. The path-way enters from behind, at the end opposite to that at which the flue enters; proceeds to the middle of the house, along the middle, till it meets the flue at the opposite; and then it turns round till it meets the flue against the back wall, close by the furnace. By this arrangement of the walk, no interruption is given to the flue; which is of great consequence, where it has so many returns to perform. A furnace invented by Mr. James Scot, of Turnham Green, a commercial Pine-grower of those days, is recommended. It is cast in one piece, and requires a wrought-iron door and a cast-iron plate to build over the chamber. Justice agrees with Miller in recommending the furnace to be built within the house, (but supplied from without) in order that no heat may be lost.
The plan given requires no succession-house; but he describes a frame used by many persons for growing young Pines, “made in the same manner as common hot-bed frames, but higher and broader; that is, three feet higher at the back, sloping to one and a half in front, and six feet wide.” These cover a tan-pit causewayed at bottom, and surrounded by a stone wall. It is very proper, he says, to have these frames at work as well as the stoves. He also mentions flued pits, such as are described by Miller (Sect. 2.) Both stoves and pits he covers with boards, tarpauling, or mats, at night; and the fuel he uses is coal or peat, avoiding wood as of too rapid consumption.
_Soil._ Two-thirds of good loamy kitchen-garden mould, one-third of old rotten cows’ dung, or hot-bed dung, and to every eight barrowfuls of this a barrowful of sea-sand. He adds, “If your ground is naturally sandy, after having mixed it with the dung above mentioned, add thereto a third of good fat marl; which succeeded so well with me, that in this compost I had much larger fruit than in any other compound which I used to give them, which induced me to put, at all times, a good _deal of marl_ in the compost I used for these plants.” This mixture should lie for six months in those parts of the garden which are airy and least exposed to the sun; after the first three months, turn it over every fortnight. _Scots Gardeners’ Directory_, 2d edit. p. 124.
_General management._ The same as is given by Miller. He tried some plants turned out of the pots with their balls, and planted in the bark for the last nine months before the fruit ripened, and found the fruit larger and earlier, but not better flavoured than that of the plants in pots. In shifting, he never cuts off any of the leaves; “for it is certain,” he adds, “that the leaves of all plants and trees bear the same office to them, as the pulmonary vessels do to human bodies.” He waters over the leaves when the plants have shewn fruit; because the fruit stalks, occupying what in young plants was a hollow tube, no injury can happen. P. 129.
_Insects._ At the first appearance of the bug, he picks off the scale with a pin; and if that does not clean the leaves, he washes with a sponge; and, in extreme cases, uses Miller’s mode.
_Fruit produced._ The object of all his directions is, “to have fruit large, good, and early, in a right season; viz. from the middle of June to the middle of September, but no later; for the rays of the sun, at that time, have not strength enough to give them that poignancy of smell and taste that they ought to have.” P. 134. “Cut fruit when their smell is strongest and most poignant; if too ripe, they soon turn insipidly sweet, and have no more taste than an orange. Cut them about ten o’clock in the forenoon, with about four inches of stalk to them. When the fruit is to be sent to a distance, cut a day or more before they are ripe, with a larger portion of stalk to them, and wrap them very close in paper, to preserve them from the air; otherwise their flavour will escape.” P. 132.
SECT. IV.
_Culture of the Pine Apple, by John Giles, at Lewisham, in Kent, 1767._
This author, who was gardener to Lady Boyd, and afterwards foreman in the Lewisham nursery, says, he writes after many years’ practice and observation; and that his treatise will be found “of more real advantage to a young unexperienced gardener, than his giving a premium of five or ten guineas to a mercenary old one (who perhaps might have had some practice, with a trifling degree of success,) to learn--what? why, to spoil his plants, with the loss of both money and reputation.”
“Notwithstanding the directions of Miller, Hill, (probably alluding to a letter on the Pine Apple in “Gardener’s New Calendar,” written by Sir John Hill, under his assumed name of Barnes,) Meader, &c. who have endeavoured to explore the method how the Pine Apple is to be grown; yet, upon trial, the success has always fallen much short of their expectation. For these reasons, Mr. Giles “presents the public with explicit directions for managing and bringing to perfection the Pine Apple; in which all the obstacles and difficulties which gardeners have met with in raising that fruit are remedied, and the true method pointed out in a clear and satisfactory manner.” Preface, p. vii.
_Form of House._ The plants are brought forward in pits, and afterwards fruited in a stove forty feet long and twelve feet wide, with a pit six feet wide, surrounded by a path, and a flue which makes three returns in a flue close under the back wall. The front of the pit is about three, and the back about five feet from the glass. It will fruit, he says, a hundred plants annually, they being brought forward in the low pits or frames, and removed to the fruiting-house in September or October.
The obvious objection to the plan of his house is the having no flue in front.
_Soil._ A rich hazely loam from a well-pastured common. This soil alone, he says, not only answers well for Pines, but for most vegetables.
_General Management._ He recommends keeping a moist atmosphere in the house, and giving abundance of air when the plants are in fruit. His other directions relate to mere routine practices, and offer nothing else worth quoting.
_Insects._ A moist atmosphere, he says, will keep down these. “It is only poor plants,” he says, “which are not in a good state of health, that are infested with insects. They are encouraged by the warmth and dryness of the air of the stove, and the bad state of the plants; but where cleanliness and moisture are attended to, there will never be any worth notice.” P. 36.
_Fruit produced._ He fruits the Queen Pine in two years, at the usual season; but does not state to what size the fruit attains.
SECT. V.
_Culture of the Pine Apple, by Adam Taylor, Gardener at Devizes, in Wiltshire, 1769._
This author, who was gardener to J. Sutton, Esq. at New Park, professes “to lay down a mode by which the Pine Apple may be produced in higher perfection, with more ease and less expense than has been hitherto known in this climate.” He offers his treatise with confidence, as not being founded on hypothesis, but on some years’ experience; and it may be depended on, as “it admits of the attestation of many persons whose taste and judgment are unquestionable.”
“The present way,” he says, “of raising Pine Apples, is made so chargeable by the erection of hot-houses, and the consumption of fuel, that many, even of tolerable fortunes, have been deterred by the consideration of it, from raising this desirable fruit. It is farther attended with trouble, and much uncertainty; and the fruit itself rarely answers the expense either in size, number, or quality. But by the practice now recommended, these several inconveniences are sufficiently obviated. There are very few, even of commercial gardeners, who are not able to accumulate the necessary quantity of horse-dung, which is the principal article for this valuable end. And by such application of it, they shall not fail to find their hopes abundantly answered, and their labour well repaid.” P. 3.
_Form of House._ He both rears and fruits them in a pit. This he forms either of boards, or of brick-work three feet deep, and of any convenient length and width; and on the walls or boards, which inclose the tan, he places a frame two and a half feet deep in front, and four feet high behind. The ends and front are of glass, and the latter is formed into small sashes, which slide in a groove. The back is formed of inch boards, and against these he places a powerful lining of dung.
The pit he fills with tan, or dung, as may be most convenient; dung, he says, does as well as tan, and only requires a little more trouble, which is amply repaid to the gardener by the value of the dung to the garden, when no longer in active fermentation.
An anonymous annotator (to the copy of Taylor’s book, in the library of the Horticultural Society) says, “I find by experience, that the dung of four horses is sufficient to work two frames twenty-six feet each in length, and six in breadth; one for the fruiting-house, the other for succession plants; and that it may be reasonably expected to cut forty fruit yearly after the first year, and the dung as valuable for the field or garden, as if this use had not been made of it.” P. 3.
_Soil._ “Take one load of mould from under the turf of a good pasture, and, if it be very light, add to it the fourth part of a load of good mellow loam: but if it be of itself of a loamy nature, mix into it two or three bushels of sea-sand. Then take the fourth part of a load of dung from a cow-yard, if it can be thence procured; but if not, take the same quantity of good rotten dung from your old cucumber or melon beds. Mix these well together, and turn the whole three or four times, that it may thoroughly imbibe the air. All the large clods should be well broken, but not sifted or screened, as is the practice with many; so shall you have a compost, which is excellently adapted to the growth and nourishment of the plants.” P. 15.
_General Management._ He takes great care to keep his plants in a dormant state during winter; but about the end of March and April, he applies linings, and brings them into a growing state, shifting all those not intended for fruiting that season. He covers the frames at night throughout the year with straw, and a sail-cloth over, excepting in the warmest part of summer; at that season, during fine showers, he removes the sashes entirely, and lets the plants receive a gentle watering. He frequently waters over the leaves in the afternoons with a pot having a fine rose, and shuts up early; which he finds produces a moist heat, rapid growth, and keeps down insects. In winter he uses a tin pipe, to keep the water from touching the leaves of the plants; and as he has a very low temperature at that season, he gives them very little.
_Insects._ These he is not much troubled with; but he says, “Such plants as are attacked by them, should be immediately taken out of the frame, and plunged into a moderate hot-bed made of dung; this hot-bed should be covered with one or two cucumber-frames, adapted to the height of the plants. Let these frames be covered with lights; so as to confine the steam of the dung. As soon as the plants receive the heat of this bed, water them all over the tops of the leaves with cold water. This will effectually destroy the insects; after which the plants are to be restored to the covered frame again. A trial or two of this will convince any person of the infallible efficacy of it.” P. 38.
It thus appears that he destroys them by the operation of the ammoniacal gas, much in the same manner as does Mr. Baldwin.
_Fruit produced._ He says nothing of the weight of the fruit, but he calculates on fruiting the plants in two years, and ripening the fruit only in summer and autumn, or between July and October inclusive; and he prefers the Queen Pine to all others.
SECT. VI.
_Culture of the Pine Apple by William Speechly, gardener to his Grace the Duke of Portland, at Welbeck, in Nottinghamshire, 1779._