The different modes of cultivating the pine-apple / From its first introduction into Europe to the late improvements of T.A. Knight, esq.

by J. C. Loudon

CHAP. IV.
OF THE DIFFERENT MODES OF CULTIVATING THE PINE APPLE WHICH HAVE BEEN, AND ARE PRACTISED IN BRITAIN BY PRACTICAL GARDENERS.

The Pine Apple plant, as already observed, seems to have been first introduced by Mr. Bentick, afterwards re-introduced from Holland in 1719, and then first cultivated for its fruit in Sir Matthew Decker’s garden at Richmond. Here, according to Professor Bradley, the gardener, “Mr. Henry Telende, imitated so successfully M. Le Cour’s newly discovered method of cultivating this delicious fruit, that he is likely to ripen forty of them in the present (1724) autumn.” (Husb. and Gard. for June 1724, p. 161.) He elsewhere tells us that “the late instance of bringing the Ananas or Pine Apple to perfection in England, by the ingenuity of Mr. Telende at Sir Matthew Decker’s, has so far gained upon the curious, that already many of our nobility have undertaken the same improvement; and ’tis not to be doubted but a year or two more will make this undertaking much more general.” He mentions “their being brought to extraordinary perfection at the garden of the right honourable Spencer Compton, Speaker of the House of Commons, at Chiswick; and at that curious gentleman’s, Mr. John Warner, Rotherhithe.” He informs us that an excellent stove on a new plan, with a bark pit, was built by William Parker, Esq. near Croydon, in Surry, to make “experiments in ripening fruits that has not been tried;” and that Mr. Fairchild, in 1722, built one at Hoxton for Pine Apples and other tender plants, in which the fire flues were raised above the surface of the floor, by which means all danger from damps was avoided. Mr. Cowel, as before observed, ([p. 4.]) states that in 1730 Pine Apple stoves were to be found in almost every curious garden. Mr. Telende’s mode of cultivating the Pine Apple is detailed by Professor Bradley in 1724, and the most generally approved mode of culture from that time to the middle of the eighteenth century may be considered as given by Miller in his Dictionary. The improvements which have since been made by practical gardeners, may be ranged under the heads of Justice, Speechly, Abercrombie, M’Phail, Nicol, Griffin, Baldwin, Andrews, Oldacre, Gunter, Grange, and Aiton. To each of these names we shall devote a section; and under each, consider in succession, the form of house, soil, general treatment, insects, and fruit produced.

Sect. I.
Mode of cultivating the Pine Apple practised by Mr. Henry Telende, in the Garden of Sir M. Decker, at Richmond, 1719, to 1730, or later.

Form of House. For the education and ripening of this fruit, Mr. Telende employed a frame made of deal, closely jointed: the length eleven feet, divided equally into four lights; the width seven feet and a half; three feet high at the back, and about ten inches in front. The pit was somewhat more than five feet deep in the ground; the sides were lined with brick, and the bottom covered with pebbles.

The stove or fruiting-house used was that with iron plates over the flues; which, for greater warmth, was covered thick with thatch, and the glasses were well guarded with shutters; and that the fire might be constant, he burnt only such turf as is commonly used in Holland, agreeable to M. Le Cour’s method.

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.