Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/58

 requisite temperature is from 65° to 75°, and from 75° to 100° by day. Experience can manage these affairs with sight and feeling, but the untutored require the aid of a thermometer and a stick to poke into the dung-bed, to ascertain the internal heat of the material. When it begins to decline, give it a fresh lining of manure all around, of eighteen inches in thickness, and as high as to cover half of the frame. The vines, if well managed, will bloom within a month from the day of sowing. The male and female flowers are on the same plant, and art may render assistance, by taking the male blossom and putting its centre within the female, which is easily distinguished by having at its base a form of a cucumber, half an inch long. After being impregnated, it will be fit to cut in two weeks. These operations may be begun and gone through any time from Christmas to March. To cultivate cucumbers extensively, all that is requisite is a preparation of manure, frames, and sash. Use the above described bed for growing the seedling plants, transplanting them into larger frames or pits, (see fig. 15,) three plants being sufficient for each sash, and fifty to seventy fruit may be cut from each light. When the author was gardener to the late Henry Pratt, Esq., of Lemon Hill, near this city, he cut Cucumbers in February, and had them for the table regularly till they could be obtained from the open ground.

Cucumbers can also be cultivated under hand-glasses; (see Fig. 13.) Dig out a pit early in April, eighteen inches deep and wide, fill it with warm manure, and cover with six or eight inches of rich light soil, in which sow the seed. Hand-glasses are made of various sizes, but such as are eighteen inches square will be found the most useful. Admit air during sunshine, as directed for frames, and if cold nights prevail, cover them with mats or litter of any kind. Cucumbers for pickling should be sown from the end of June to the 15th of July. Either the Short Prickly or Long Green is suitable for the purpose. There is also a small Cluster Cucumber used by some for bottling or mixing with a finer sort of pickles.