Insects. After many trials and experiments, he found the following the most effectual wash for destroying insects on Pines:—
“To one gallon of soft rain-water, add eight ounces of soft green soap, one ounce of tobacco, and three table spoonfuls of turpentine; stir and mix them well together in a watering-pot, and let them stand for a day or two. When you are going to use this mixture, stir and mix it well again, then strain it through a thin cloth. If the fruit only is infested, dash the mixture over the crown and fruit, with a squirt, until all is fairly wet; and what runs down the stem of the fruit will kill all the insects that are amongst the bottom of the leaves. When young plants are infested, take them out of their pots, and shaking all the earth from the roots, (tying the leaves of the largest plants together,) and plunge them into the above mixture, keeping every part covered for the space of five minutes; then take them out, and set them on a clean place, with their tops declining downwards, for the mixture to drain out of their centre. When the plants are dry, put them into smaller pots than before, and plunge them into the bark-bed.”
Fruit produced. Mr. Griffin’s object seems to have been to produce large fruit in the proper season. In the year 1802, when gardener to J. C. Girardot, Esq. at Kelham, near Nottingham, he cut twenty Queen Pines, which weighed together eighty-seven pounds seven ounces. In 1803, one weighing five pounds three ounces. In July, 1804, one of the New Providence kind, weighing seven pounds two ounces. In August, 1804, one of the same kind, weighing nine pounds three ounces. And in 1805, he cut twenty-two Queen Pines, which weighed together one hundred and eighteen pounds three ounces.
Sect. X.
Culture of the Pine Apple, by Mr. Thomas Baldwin, Gardener to the Marquis of Hertford, at Ragley, in Warwickshire, from 1805 to the present time.
Mr. Baldwin is reputed the first Pine cultivator in England; he has given some account of his practice in a tract of a few pages, which, being sold much above the usual price of printed books, never obtained so much circulation as manuscript copies of it, which were handed about among the principal Pine-growers near London.
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Form of House. The succession, or nursing pits, according to Mr. Baldwin’s plan ([fig. 11.]), in which the young plants are to remain both winter and summer, should be constructed of timber, seven feet wide, and seven feet three inches high at the back, the front being in the same proportion. The method of preparing the bed is as follows:—“Sink your pit (2.) three feet three inches deep, as long as you require, and sufficiently broad to admit of linings on each side (1, 1.); make a good drain at the bottom of the pit to keep it dry; then set posts, about the dimensions of six inches square, in the pit, at convenient distances, (say about the width of the top lights,) and case it round with one inch and a half deal wrought boards, above the surface, and below with any inferior boards or planks. The dimensions of my succession-bed or frame, are thirty-nine feet long, and seven feet wide; containing two hundred and seventy-three square feet, which will hold three hundred and fifty suckers, from the end of September till the seventh of April.”
Soil. “From old pasture or meadow ground strip off the turf, and dig to the depth of six or eight inches, according to the goodness of the soil; draw the whole together to some convenient place, and mix it with one-half of good rotten dung; frequently turn it over for twelve months, and it will be fit for use. This is the only compost dung for young and old plants.”