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CAENATIONS AND PINKS TO ELOWEE IN WINTER. 



BY KOBEKT OUBEIDGE, 



Churcli Walk Nursery, Stoke Newington. 



LTHOUGH three years since I contributed to tlie 

 Eloeal Would an essay on this subject, I have been 

 requested to " brush it over " once more ; and in com- 

 plying with this request, I take advantage to show how 

 the varieties of the common garden pink may be forced, 

 for it is not generally known that they are well adapted to furnish 

 fragrant winter flowers, aud I have grown them in sufficient quan- 

 tity to have become familiar with every little circumstance of 

 management on which the cultivator must depend for success. I 

 have only to request that readers who wish to understand the sub- 

 ject practically will pay attention to every point, as I shall endeavour 

 plainly to state it. 



The Tree Caenations are the most valuable of the race for 

 winter flowers, and there is but one way of treating them, and that 

 is to raise afresh lot of plants every year, and to destroy the old ones 

 as soon as they have furnished a sufficient number of cuttings. 



The plants intended for flowering in winter and early spring 

 should be struck in February, March, and April. Take cuttings of 

 two or three joints in length, remove the lowest leaves only, put 

 them into pans or boxes (boxes are always best), in sand alone, and 

 shut them up close in a mild moist heat. Nothing like dung-heat 

 for such things ; but we strike a good many in the propagating 

 house, over a tank. The first lot may be hastened and made better 

 plants of by putting the cuttings singly into thumb-pots filled with 

 sandy peat, from which they can be shifted on ; and if the cultivator 

 loses the early part of the season, and wants to make up for lost 

 time, he must do them singly in pots, as by this method they have 

 no check. When well furnished with roots, put those from boxes 

 into thumb-pots, and those from thumb-pots into 60-size, and so on, 

 always observing that they should not be shifted till they really 

 need it, nor be allowed to get pot-bound and starving for want of a 

 shift. 



Sx)on after the first shift, nip out the points, or, in other words, 

 " stop " them. But after this they must not he stopped again ; this is 

 very important. The pots must be well drained, and the compost 

 should be turfy loam, with about a third of its bulk of old 

 cow-manure, and a fair proportion of silver sand. Continue to 

 shift as required till the middle of July, when they may be in pots 

 of eight or ten inches in diameter. 



Erom the time the cuttings are rooted, the cultivator must use 

 his own judgment as to the amount of heat they should be subjected 

 to — the golden rule being to give them as little as possible, and to 

 get them into frames and pits as soon as ever it is safe to deny them 

 the aid of artificial heat. If driven hard, and much roasted, they 

 will be covered with vermin, and more or less spoiled. Erom the 



