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HOME-GEOWN HYACINTHS. 



YACINTH bulbs are well worth keeping for future use, 

 and may be made eminently serviceable both for pot 

 culture and the decoration of the border, and wherever 

 cut flowers are in demand at this time of year, home- 

 grown hyacinths are invaluable. But to say that we 

 can get them up to equal Dutch bulbs is nonsense. The man who 

 so speaks should be required on pain of excommunication from the 

 horticultural connection to bring forward samples in flower which 

 can be proved to be home-grown, and which shall stand the test 

 of comparison with first-class spikes of imported bulbs; and until 

 this is done, we may as well confess that the Dutch are as ever the 

 masters of this department. 



It must not be supposed that with the best possible care bulbs 

 saved in England will ever bloom a second or third time so bravely 

 as they did the first. But that they are worth keeping has been 

 abundantly proved in the experimental garden, and our first display 

 by the plunging system consists always of bulbs which are strictly 

 home-grown, as we pot these early, but never pot purchased bulbs 

 until the middle of December, in order to postpone our best display 

 until the cruel March winds are past. Since the middle of February 

 to this time the front court of the experimental garden has been 

 delightfully gay with hyacinths saved from previous seasons by the 

 process I shall now describe. 



Let us suppose a lot of bulbs that have just done flowering in 

 glasses. These bulbs have lived on water, and are therefore pretty 

 well exhausted ; moreover, they have not had sufficient light, and 

 consequently the leaves are of great length, and the flower-stalk is 

 perhaps so lengthened out as to have a most ridiculous appearance. 

 Undoubtedly the best plan in this case is to throw the bulbs away. 

 But, if you will have patience with them, they may be saved to 

 bloom again — not in glasses, certainly, but in the borders. Your 

 first care must be to preserve the leaves from injury, to keep them 

 alive until they have contributed to the bulb a certain amount of 

 nutriment for its next year's growth. There are many ways to do 

 this, but the practice which has been most successful here is as 

 follows : — A bed is made up with two or three feet of nearly decayed 

 manure, and on the surface is spread six inches depth of a mixture 

 consisting of equal parts loam and rotten manure, and a quantify 

 of coarse grit added. The sifted sweepings of gravel walks supply 

 the last-named ingredient. A frame is then put on, and we have, 

 not a hot-bed, but a tvarm bed. "Wherever mauure that has been 

 laid up for some time is turned and made into a bed, there is a 

 gentle fermentation and a nice warmth, admirably adapted to pro- 

 mote the functions of vegetable life without any forcing effect. Such 

 a bed is invaluable for many other purposes besides the one it is 

 now intended for. The next business is to cut off the flower-spikes 

 of the hyacinths, not close down to the bulb, but below the lowest of 

 the flowers, so as to remove all the flowers, and leave the remainder of 



