24G 



THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



bed with a bottom of di 



and 



inches of good stuff on the top of it, 

 The plants so managed will lift at last 

 with nice, bushy, fibrous roots, and 

 when got into trenches will begin to 

 grow at once ; but if put into trenches 

 direct from the seed-bed, will make no 

 growth at all for a fortnight, so there 

 Avill be nothing gained by skimping 

 the trouble in the first instance. Many 

 an exhibitor of celery has no better 

 contrivance for a seed-bed than a few 

 boards extemporized into a frame by 

 means of posts driven in at the corners, 

 the boards put against the posts, and 

 held with a few nails, or by four more 

 posts outside. A wheelbarrowful of 

 hot dung and a foot depth of rich soil 

 constitute the bed, which holds its heat 

 long enough to start the seed into vita- 

 lity, and a few laths and mats, or an 

 old door or shutter, is the covering till 

 the plants arc up. The best celery I 

 ever saw was grown by a man down 

 Stepney way, five and twenty years 

 ago, on a bed of leaves saved over win- 

 ter out of the wet, and the bottom 

 knocked out of an egg-chest for a 

 frame, the bottom being then used to 

 lay over it to keep in the little heat 

 the leaves produced by fermenting. 



The planting out and management 

 in trenches may be deferred dli next 



month, without inconvenience to any 

 of our readers, but one more hint may 

 be offered to those who have a hot, 

 hungry soil; and who, for that reason, 

 deny themselves all hope of celery. In 

 such cases, whatever can be scraped 

 together from the muck-pit and the 

 stable must be used to enrich the soil, 

 and if the ground is dry and liable to 

 be burnt during summer, make a four- 

 feet bed below the level, say a foot at 

 Last, and enrich the bed as far as 

 means allow, and grow the celery in 

 rows in the same way as cabbages, six 

 inches apart every way will do. Give 

 as much water as will keep the bed 

 always moist, and once a-week a dose 

 of liquid manure, and do not earth them 

 up at all. You will thus get a supply 

 for soups, and be well repaid for the 

 little trouble occasioned. In very 

 many gardens, on hot, chalky, and 

 sandy soils, the growth of celery is 

 never attempted. It certainly will not 

 grow fine without good loam and 

 plenty of manure, but a small supply 

 is better than none, and the flavour of 

 the short red stumps that are obtain- 

 able under the worst of circumstances, 

 is not much inferior, for culinary pur- 

 poses, to that grown under every pos- 

 sible advantage. 



BEDS OE EOSES. 



On this 27th of October, wheu the Eloeal 

 World ought to be printed aud ready for 

 its million readers, I am enjoying a rose 

 show of my own, and, for the thousandth 

 time, pronouncing General Jacqueminot a 

 wonder of wonders, and the best garden rose 

 ever produced or dreamt of. Yet gardeners 

 tell me it does better here than anywhere 

 within their several experiences. I can only 

 say it does all I wish it, aud more than I have 

 auy right to expect, for I don't treat it half 

 so liberally as some people. Round my two 

 semicircles it stands at regular distances, 

 loaded with blossoms on every shoot, and 

 they are better now than in June, because 

 they do not expand quite so much, for when 

 the General is full open his yellow eye betrays 

 him as not so double a flower as he pretended 

 to be. I have compared this rose carefully 

 with all the rest of the same class, and there 

 is not one to equal it, all things considered, 



though plenty that beat in this or that par- 

 ticular. Ravel aud Evique de Nimcs are mar- 

 vellously coloured, but they don't combine 

 the profuse incessant blooming habit of the 

 General, with the glories of a good show- 

 flower; and for garden decoration, properties 

 are not so important as colour, and plenty of 

 it. But when three-parts out, nicely cupped, 

 and in such genial gentle sunshine as we have 

 been blessed with this October, the General 

 will proclaim himself the most useful hybrid 

 perpetual rose we have — hybrid, certainly, 

 aud very perpetual, and the last blooms almost 

 as good as the first. Now here is a fact of 

 importauce, worked plants of this rose do not 

 bloom near so profusely as those on their own 

 roots, and two small top-dressings with ma- 

 nure do it, and all other free-blooming roses, 

 more good than one heavy one, which may 

 cause rank grow th and run them out of their 

 strength before the season is half gone. 



