Gardening Indoors and Under Glass Part 13

Part Two--Home Gla.s.s

CHAPTER XIX

ITS OPPORTUNITIES

It cannot be said that America has yet reached the gardening age. There is no doubt, however, that the appreciation of flowers, and the liking for things horticultural in general, is growing rapidly. The stimulus that compels hundreds to turn with delight to the joy in the creative work of growing things arises from a sound foundation. Comparatively few people, however, realize that this pleasure can be had by them around the entire circle of the months. They look forward to planting time in the spring and accept as inevitable the cessation of their gardening adventures with the first frost.

It is to such people that the message of home gla.s.s must come as good tidings indeed. For them the gentle art of gardening under gla.s.s has seemed a distant and mysterious thing. Little indeed have they realized how easily it might be brought within reach; that instead of being an expensive luxury it would be by no means impossible to make it a paying investment, yielding not only pleasure but profit as well.

As a matter of fact, when one's mind is once made up not to sacrifice the pleasures of gardening for six months every year, a little energy, ingenuity and a very few dollars will go a long way in providing the necessary equipment.

Nor is the care of the ordinary flowers, and the vegetables suited for winter use, such a complicated profession that the beginner cannot achieve quite a considerable measure of success with his or her very first attempts, provided that regular care is given the work in hand. It is a much easier task than succeeding with plants in the house, notwithstanding the fact that general opinion is to the contrary.

It is not necessary to start in on a large scale. A very few square feet of soil, where all the conditions can be controlled as they are under gla.s.s, will produce an amazing amount. Take for instance lettuce grown for the home table. How good it is right fresh and crisp from the soil compared to the wilted or artificially revived bunches one can get at the grocer's! Outdoors you put it a foot apart in rows a foot and a half apart; a patch 3 x 10 feet would give you twenty heads. In the home garden under gla.s.s you set out a batch of Grand Rapids lettuce plants, one of the very best in quality, six inches each way, so that a little piece of bench 3 x 10 feet would give you one hundred heads (which incidentally at the grocer's would cost you $10. or $12.--enough good money to buy gla.s.s for a quite roomy little lean-to). (See page 164.)

Details of construction, etc., are given in the following pages, but the most important thing of all is just to make up your mind that you will have a little greenhouse of your own. If you once decide to have it the way can be found, for the necessary cash outlay is very small indeed.

Think of the variety of ways you could use such a winter garden! Not only may lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, beets and other vegetables be had out of season, but you can get a better start with your garden than ever before--put it weeks and weeks ahead of the old sow-out-in-the-ground way. And then consider the flowers! A dozen carnation plants, for instance, would occupy about six square feet of room, say 2 x 3 feet of bench, and would supply you comfortably with blossoms all winter long--nice fresh ones outlasting twice over the cold storage blooms from the retail florist's--to say nothing of the added value of having them actually home grown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: It is surprising how most people over-estimate the difficulties and expense of maintaining a small greenhouse. In relation to the pleasure one brings, the cost is exceedingly small]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A lean-to type of greenhouse, such as has been built on the east wall of this house, is within reach of almost any owner of a small country place]

CHAPTER XX

THE COLDFRAME AND THE HOTBED

The simplest form of home gla.s.s is the coldframe. The simplest hothouse is the manure heated coldframe or hotbed.

The following directions for making the frames and preparing the soil for them are taken from the author's _Home Vegetable Gardening_.

For the ordinary garden, all the plants needed may be started successfully in hotbeds and coldframes. The person who has had no experience with these has usually an exaggerated idea of their cost and of the skill required to manage them. The skill is not as much a matter of expert knowledge as of careful regular care, daily. Only a few minutes a day, but every day. The cost need be but little, especially if one is a bit handy with tools. The sash which serves for the cover, and is removable, is the important part of the structure. Sash may be had, ready glazed and painted, at from $2.50 to $3.50 each, and with care they will last ten or even twenty years, so you can see at once that not a very big increase in the yield of your garden will be required to pay interest on the investment. Or you can buy the sash unglazed, at a proportionately lower price, and put the gla.s.s in yourself, if you prefer to spend a little more time and less money. However, if you are not familiar with the work, and want only a few sash, I would advise purchasing the finished article. In size they are three feet by six.

Frames upon which to put the sash covering may also be bought complete, but here there is a chance to save money by constructing your own frames--the materials required being 2 x 4 inch lumber for posts, and inch-boards; or better, if you can easily procure them, plank 2 x 12 inches.

So far as these materials go the hotbed and coldframe are alike. The difference is that while the coldframe depends for its warmth upon catching and holding the heat of the sun's rays, the hotbed is artificially heated by fermenting manure, or in rare instances, by hot water or steam pipes.

In constructing the hotbed there are two methods used; either placing the frames on top of the manure heap or by putting the manure within the frames. The first method has the advantage of permitting the hotbed to be made upon frozen ground, when required in the spring. The latter, which is the better, must be built before the ground freezes, but is more economical of manure. The manure in either case should be that of grain-fed horses, and if a small amount of straw bedding, or leaves--not more, however, than one-third of the latter--be mixed among it, so much the better. Get this manure several days ahead of the time wanted for use and prepare by stacking in a compact, tramped down heap. Turn it over after three or four days, and re-stack, being careful to put the manure from the top and sides of the pile now on the inside.

Having now ready the heating apparatus and the superstructure of our miniature greenhouse, the building of it is a very simple matter. If the ground is frozen, spread the manure in a low, flat heap nine or ten feet on each side, a foot and a half deep, and as long as the number of sash to be used demands. A cord of manure thus furnishes a bed for about three sash, not counting for the ends of the string or row. This heap should be well trodden down and upon it should be placed the box or frame upon which the sash are to rest. In using this method it will be more convenient to have the frame made up beforehand and ready to place upon the manure, as shown in one of the ill.u.s.trations. This should be at least twelve inches high at the front and some half a foot higher at the back. Fill in with at least four inches--better six--of good garden soil containing plenty of humus so that it may allow water to soak through readily.

The other method is to construct the frames on the ground before severe freezing, and in this case the front should be at least twenty-four inches high, part of which--not more than half--may be below the ground level. The 2 x 12 inch planks, when used, are handled as follows: stakes are driven in to support the back plank some two or three inches above the ground,--which should, of course, be level. The front plank is sunk two or three inches into the ground and held upright by stakes on the outside, nailed on. Remove enough dirt from inside the frame to bank up the planks about halfway on the outside. When this banking has frozen to a depth of two or three inches, cover with rough manure or litter to keep frost from striking through. The manure for heating should be prepared as above and put in to the depth of a foot, trodden down, first removing four to six inches of soil to be put back on top of the manure,--a cord of the latter, in this case, serving seven sashes. The vegetables to be grown, and the season and climate, will determine the depth of manure required--it will be from one to two feet,--the latter depth seldom being necessary.

It must not be overlooked that this manure, when spent for heating purposes, is still as good as ever to enrich the garden, so that the expense of putting it in and removing it from the frames is all that you can fairly charge up against your experiment with hotbeds, if you are interested to know whether they really pay.

The exposure for the hotbeds should be where the sun will strike most directly and where they will be sheltered from the north. Put up a fence of rough boards, five or six feet high, or place the frames south of some building.

The coldframe is constructed practically as in the hotbed, except that if manure is used at all it is for the purpose of enriching the soil where lettuce, radishes, cuc.u.mbers or other crops are to be grown to maturity in it.

All this may seem like a lot of trouble to go for such a small thing as a packet of seed. In reality it is not nearly so much trouble as it sounds, and then, too, this is for the first season only. You will have a well built frame lasting for years--forever, if you want to take a little more time and make it of concrete instead of boards.

But now that the frame is made, how to use it is the next question.

The first consideration must be the soil. It should be rich, light, friable. There are some garden loams that will do well just as taken up, but as a rule better results will be obtained where the soil is made up specially, as follows: rotted sods two parts, old rotted manure one part, and enough coa.r.s.e sand added to make the mixture fine and crumbly, so that, even when moist, it will fall apart when pressed into a ball in the hand. Such soil is best prepared by cutting out sod, in the summer, where the gra.s.s is green and thick, indicating a rich soil. Along old fences or the roadside where the wash has settled will be good places to get limited quant.i.ties. These should be cut with considerable soil and stacked, gra.s.sy sides together, in layers in a compost pile. If the season proves very dry, occasionally soak the heap through. In late fall put in the cellar, or wherever solid freezing will not take place, enough to serve for spring work under gla.s.s. The amount can readily be calculated; soil for three sash, four inches deep, for instance, would take eighteen feet or a pile three feet square and two feet high. The fine manure (and sand, if necessary) may be added in the fall or when using in the spring. Here again it may seem to the amateur that unnecessary pains are being taken. I can but repeat what has been suggested all through these pages, that it will require but little more work to do the thing the best way as long as one is doing it at all, and the results will be not only better, but practically certain--and that is a tremendously important point about all gardening operations.

While the cold frame and hotbed offer great advantages--especially in the way of room--over growing plants and starting seed in the house, they are nevertheless incomparably less useful than the simplest small greenhouse. Plants may be wintered over in them, violets may be grown in them, lettuce may be grown late in the fall and early in the spring, and followed by cuc.u.mbers. But they are not convenient to work in. One is dependent on the weather. They are not satisfactorily under control.

Take, for instance, one of those dark fall days, with a cold nasty drizzle cutting down on a slant, or one of those bright sunny and cloudy chill-winded spring days, when no pleasure is to be had out-of-doors.

Under the shelter of your little gla.s.s roof, where you can make your own weather, what fun it is to be potting up a batch of cuttings, or putting in a few packets of choice seed for the extra early garden! There is nothing like it.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONSERVATORIES AND SMALL GREENHOUSES

Have you ever stepped from the chill and dreariness of a windy day, when it seems as if the very life of all things growing were shrunk to absolute desolation, into the welcome warmth and light and fragrance, the beauty and joy of a gla.s.s house full of green and blossoming plants?

No matter how small it was, even though you had to stoop to enter the door, and mind your elbows as you went along, what a good, glad comfortable feeling flooded in to you with the captive sunlight! What a world of difference was made by that sheet of gla.s.s between you and the outer bitterness and blankness. Doubtless such an experience has been yours. Doubtless, too, you wished vaguely that you could have some such little corner to escape to, a stronghold to fly to when old winter lays waste the countryside. But April came with birds, and May with flowers, and months before the first dark, shivery days of the following autumn, you had forgotten that another winter would come on, with weeks of cheerless, uncomfortable weather. Or possibly you did not forget, until you had investigated the matter of greenhouse building and found that even a very small house, built to order, was far beyond your means.

Do not misunderstand me as disparaging the construction companies: they do excellent work--and get excellent prices. You may not be able to afford an Italian garden, with hundreds of dollars' worth of rare plants, but that does not prevent your having a more modest garden spot, in which you have planned and worked yourself. Just so, though one of these beautiful gla.s.s structures may be beyond your purse, you may yet have one that will serve your purpose just as practically. The fact of the matter is, you can have a small house at a very small outlay, which will pay a good, very good interest on your investment. With it you will be able to have flowers all the year round, set both your flower and vegetable garden weeks ahead in the spring, save many cherished plants from the garden, and have fresh green vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes, tomatoes and cuc.u.mbers that can readily be grown under gla.s.s.

And you will be surprised, if you can give the work some personal attention, or, better still, have the fun of doing a little of the actual building yourself, at how small an outlay you can put up a substantial structure of practical size, say 20 feet by 10--of the "lean-to" form.

By way of ill.u.s.tration let us see what the material for such a house would cost, and how to erect it. Almost every dwelling house has some sheltered corner or wall where some gla.s.s "lean-to" could easily be added, and the shape and dimensions can be made to suit the special advantages offered. We will consider a simple house of the lean-to type, requiring a wall, to begin with, 20 feet long and 7 feet high, down to the ground, or a foot or so below it, if you can dig out. Below is listed the material such a house would require. With modern patented framing methods such a house has been estimated by greenhouse building companies to cost, for the material only, from $325 to $400. Yet you can have a wooden house that will serve your purpose at a cost for materials of $61 and, if you do not care to put it together yourself, a labor cost of, say, one-third more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 2--Floor plan of the lean-to type of greenhouse shown in section on the opposite page.]

As our north wall is already in place, we have only four surfaces to consider, as the accompanying diagram shows--namely, south wall, gable ends, roof and openings. For the roof we will require a ridge against the wall of the dwelling house, sash-bars running at right angles to this, a "purlin," or support, midway of these, and a sill for the lower ends. For the south wall we will need posts, one row of gla.s.s, and boards and "sheathing." For the gable ends, a board and sheathing wall to the same height, and for the balance, sash-bars and gla.s.s. The required openings will be a door or doors, and three ventilators, to give a sufficient supply of fresh air.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3--A sectional view of a two-bench, 10 X 20 ft.

house built against the dwelling wall. If possible it would be well to gain a steeper slope for the gla.s.s and better headroom. The detail in the upper right hand corner shows, at larger scale, the plate and front lights, indicated just below in the main section.]

For these the material required will be:

10 ft. of 2-in. x 4-in. ridge $ 0.80 13 10-ft. drip bars 3.25 2 10-ft. end bars 1.00 5 6-ft. x 1-1/4-in. second-hand pipe posts .50 20 ft. 1-in, second-hand iron pipe 1.00 4 1-1/4-in. x 1-in. clamps .50 20 ft. 2-in. x 4-in. eaves plate 1.60 20 ft. 2-in. x 6-in. sill 2.20 15 1-in. pipe straps .50 18 ft. 2-in. x 4-in. sill, for gables 1.50 40 ft. side bars, random lengths, for gables 1.00 3 ventilating sash for 3 24-in. x 16-in. lights 3.00 9 16-in. headers for ventilators .40 6 hinges with screws for ventilators .75 1 roll tar paper, single-ply 2.00 6 boxes 24-in. x 16-in. gla.s.s, B double thick 24.00 75 lbs. good greenhouse putty 2.50 ------ Total of items listed above $46.50

All of the above will have to come from a greenhouse material supply company, and prices given do not include freight charges. The following items may probably be bought more economically in your immediate vicinity, and the prices will vary in different sections of the country:--