Gardening Indoors and Under Glass | Page 4

paint will also add to the looks and to the life of these shelves and further tend to prevent any annoying drip from draining pots. Such a shelf will be still further improved by being covered an inch or two deep with coarse gravel or fine pebbles.
[Illustration: If possible it is well to have the house plants in a place where the moisture and temperature can be regulated for them alone]
[Illustration: In almost any house it is possible to arrange a wide sill with a metal or tile bottom where house plants may be properly cared for]
This is much better than the use of pot saucers, especially for small pots. Where a bay-window is used, if cut off from the room by glass doors, or even by curtains, it will aid greatly in keeping a moist atmosphere about the plants and preventing dust from settling on the leaves when sweeping or dusting is being done.
A window-box can readily be made of planed inch pine boards, tightly fitted and tightly joined. It should be six to ten inches wide and six to eight inches deep. If a plain box is used, it will be necessary to bore inch holes every six inches or so through the bottom to provide for carrying off of any excess of water--although, with the method of filling the box described in a later chapter, those holes would hardly ever be called into service. Plants in the house in the winter, however, are as likely to suffer from too much water as from too little, and therefore, to prevent the disagreeable possibility of having dirty drainage water running down onto several feet of floor, it will be almost as easy, and far better, to have the box constructed with a bottom made of two pieces, sloping slightly to the center where one hole is made in which a cork can be kept. A false bottom of tin or zinc, with the requisite number of holes cut out, and supported by three or four inch strips of wood running lengthways of the box, supplies the drainage. These strips must, of course, be cut in the middle to allow all the water to drain out. The false bottom will take care of any ordinary surplus of water, which can be drained off into a watering can or pitcher by taking out the cork. The details of construction of such a box are shown in figure 1. It will be best to have the box so placed upon its supporting brackets that it can be changed occasionally end for end, thus keeping the plants growing evenly, and not permitting the blooms continually to turn their backs to the inside of the room.
[Illustration: Fig. 1--Box for plants. AC--false zinc bottom; AB, CB--slanting bottom to drain water out at hole B.]
With the above simple provisions one may take advantage of all the light to be had in an ordinary window. Occasionally a better place may be found ready to hand, such as the bay-window illustrated facing page 8 or such as that described in the preceding chapter, or those mentioned in the first chapter of Part II (page 146). The effort demanded will always be repaid many times by greater ease and greater success in the management of plants, and by the wider scope permitted.
TEMPERATURE
Next in importance to light, is the matter of temperature. The ordinary house plants, to be kept in health, require a temperature of sixty-five to seventy-five degrees during the day and fifty to fifty-five degrees at night. Frequently it will not be possible to keep the room from going lower at night, but it should be kept as near that as possible; forty-five degrees occasionally will not do injury, and even several degrees lower will not prove fatal, but if frequently reached the plants will be checked and seem to stand still. Plants in the dormant, or semi-dormant condition are not so easily injured by low temperature as those in full growth; also plants which are quite dry will stand much more cold than those in moist soil.
The proper condition of temperature is the most difficult thing to regulate and maintain in growing plants in the house. There is, however, at least one room in almost every house where the night temperature does not often go below forty-five or fifty degrees, and if necessary all plants may be collected into one room during very cold weather. Another precaution which will often save them is to move them away from the windows; put sheets of newspaper inside the panes, not, however, touching the glass, as a "dead air space" must be left between. Where there is danger of freezing, a kerosene lamp or stove left burning in the room overnight will save them. Never, when the temperature outside is