244 THE FLORIST. 



Winter Mignonette, as it is generally called, requires to be treated 

 differently from the above. It is generally sown about the 20th of 

 August ; if later, it will not acquire sufficient strength by winter for 

 the London market. I generally grow from eight to ten plants in a 

 48-sized pot, which is six inches deep. For this sowing it is safest 

 to use a light sandy and rather poor mould, for if the latter is too 

 rich and strong, the plants damp off during winter. Out of nearly 

 a thousand pots, I have often scarcely lost one by attending to this, 

 by not allowing a drop of rain to fall on them during winter, by 

 never watering them unless they were flagging, and by admitting at 

 all times plenty of air. In the case of frost coming, however, they 

 are closely covered up, sometimes for a week or fortnight together ; 

 and if you have not followed the above rules, you will suffer severely 

 from damp. Do not expose your plants for some days after the frost 

 breaks up, and that only by degrees; above all things do not expose 

 them to the sun. My anxiety to give them light, after being so long 

 covered up, has sometimes led me for the moment to forget this, and 

 I have suffered severely for my negligence. 



Should the winter prove mild, the plants will root into the ashes 

 they are placed on ; therefore they must be lifted up occasionally to 

 break the roots. Slugs will annoy you, if you do not look after them ; 

 they fatten on Mignonette. To retard some of the pots, pinch the 

 heads off the plants ; by this means they will not flower so strongly 

 as those not pinched, and will yield a succession of bloom. 



Camherwell. James Cuthill. 



PROPAGATION AND TREATMENT OF BEDDING-OUT 

 PLANTS.— No. II. 



Of the thousand and one operations that make up the sum of garden 

 routine, each bears a connexion, more or less evident, with every 

 other. In duly recognising such a connexion, and in exercising the 

 necessary amount of forethought to carry it out, rests much of the 

 success in a horticultural campaign. And it is from the fact of the 

 existence of this connexion that gardening rises superior to a mere 

 mechanical art, which requires only the rule and compasses for its 

 successful practice. 



Nor is this connexion of operations less worthy of recognition in 

 small than in large gardens. The amateur, with a few rods of 

 ground and a pit of half-a-dozen lights, has equal necessity for the 

 practical appreciation of the truth with the conductor of the most 

 complicated establishment. The success of either in a great measure 

 depends on it. 



To the immediate subject of these papers it is especially ap- 

 plicable. The preservation through the winter of store -pots of soft- 

 wooded young plants depends in a great degree on their previous 

 treatment. Every gardener knows what havoc, even with the most 



