With respect to the expense of cultivating the Pine Apple, it must be acknowledged that it is greater than that required to cultivate any other fruit; from the length of time requisite to bring it to perfection; the keeping up a high temperature during the winter months, and the unremitting attention required throughout the year. Another source of expense, and in some cases of difficulty, has been the procuring of tan, or other materials, to supply a bottom heat; and the last one that may be mentioned is, that gardeners who undertake to cultivate the Pine Apple, generally are paid a higher remuneration than those who confine themselves to the other fruits.
These circumstances have lately induced some amateurs, and also some practical gardeners, to devise means of simplifying the culture of the Pine Apple, and lessening the expenses attending it. The principal amateurs are T. A. Knight, Esq. the President of the Horticultural Society, and Peter Marsland, Esq. of Woodbank, near Stockport; the principal practical gardeners are Mr. Gunter, of Earlscourt, Mr. Hay, a Horticultural architect in Edinburgh, and some others, who have made less extensive trials.
Sect. I.
Of the improvements in the culture of the Pine Apple, proposed by T. A. Knight, Esq. F.R.S. P.H.S., of Downton-Castle, Herefordshire.
Mr. Knight’s improvements consist chiefly in the disuse of bottom heat, and in the application of a much higher temperature during sunshine at all seasons, but especially in the summer season, and a much lower temperature during winter, and during the night, at all times, than is generally adopted by gardeners.
Mr. Knight had no experience in the culture of the Pine Apple till the year 1819. In that year, he informs us (in a paper published in the third volume of the Horticultural Transactions) that he tried the effect of a very high temperature during the day, in bright weather, and of comparatively low temperature during the night, and in cloudy weather. A fire of sufficient power only to preserve the house in a temperature of about 70° during summer, was employed; but no air was given, nor its escape facilitated, till the thermometer, perfectly shaded, indicated a temperature of 95°, and then only two of the upper lights, one at each end, were let down about four inches. The heat of the house was, consequently, sometimes raised to 110°, during the middle of bright days, and it generally varied in such days from 90° to 105°, declining during the evening to about 80°, and to 70° in the night. Late in the evening of every bright and hot day, the plants were copiously sprinkled with water, nearly of the temperature of the external air. The melon, water-melon, Guernsey lily, fig-tree, nectarine, orange and lemon, mango, Avocado-pear, Mammee-tree, and several other plants, part of them natives of temperate climates, grew in this hot-house so managed “through the whole summer, without any one of them being etiolated, or any way injured, by the very high temperature to which they were occasionally subjected; and from these and other facts,” Mr. Knight continues, “which have come within my observation, I think myself justified in inferring, that in almost all cases in which the object of the cultivator is to promote the rapid and vigorous growth of his plants, very high temperature, provided it be accompanied by bright sunshine, may be employed with great advantage; but it is necessary that the glass of his house should be of good quality, and that his plants be placed near it, and be abundantly supplied with sand and water.” In the above case liquid-manure was employed.
It is added, “My house contains a few Pine Apple plants, in the treatment of which I have deviated somewhat widely from the common practice; and I think with the best effects, for their growth has been exceedingly rapid, and a great many gardeners, who have come to see them, have unanimously pronounced them more perfect than any which they had previously seen. But many of the gardeners think that my mode of management will not succeed in winter, and that my plants will become unhealthy, if they do not perish in that season; and as some of them have had much experience, and I very little, I wish, at present, to decline saying more relative to the culture of that plant.” Hort. Trans. iii. 465.
The above information, the result of Mr. Knight’s experiments in 1819, was communicated to the Horticultural Society in the autumn of that year. On the 7th of March following, a paper was read to the Society on the same plants, of which the following is a transcript:
Of those gardeners who doubted whether the plants would stand the winter, it is stated, “The same gardeners have since frequently visited my hot-house, and they have unanimously pronounced my plants more healthy and vigorous than any they had previously seen: and they are all, I have good reason to believe, zealous converts to my mode of culture.
“I had long been much dissatisfied with the manner in which the Pine Apple plant is usually treated, and very much disposed to believe the bark-bed, as Mr. Kent has stated, (Hort. Trans. iii. 288.) ‘worse than useless,’ subsequent to the emission of roots by the crowns or suckers. I therefore resolved to make a few experiments upon the culture of that plant; but as I had not at that period, (the beginning of October,) any hot-house, I deferred obtaining plants till the following spring. My hot-house was not completed till the second week in June (1819,) at which period I began my experiment upon nine plants, which had been but very ill preserved through the preceding winter by the gardener of one of my friends, with very inadequate means, and in a very inhospitable climate. These, at this period, were not larger plants than some which I have subsequently raised from small crowns, (three having been afforded by one fruit,) planted in the middle of August, were in the end of December last; but they are now beginning to blossom, and in the opinion of every gardener who has seen them, promise fruit of great size and perfection. They are all of the variety known by the name of Ripley’s Queen Pine.