“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.”