246 

 VEBBENAS IN POTS. 



BY J. T. M'ELllOT, 



Head Gardener at Moray Lodge, Campdeu Hill. 



|OR selecting plants, the present time is about the best 

 during the year, because most of them now growing are 

 from late struck cuttings. Such being the case they are 

 generally clean and healthy, and more so if the pots 

 have been plunged in any cool materials under glass, as 

 decayed tan or leaves, for example. Besides, you have the advantage 

 of seeing their flowers, they being more decided in colour now than 

 earlier or later in the season. 



Having procured your plants, reduce their shoots, if long, to two 

 or three eyes — the object being to keep them bushy while young. 

 As soon as the new growth is visible, pot them into five-inch pots. 

 Use plenty of drainage. The soil should have mixed with it a 

 fourth of silver sand. After you have shifted them, put them into 

 a cool frame, and keep shaded from the burning rays of the mid-day 

 sun. As soon as you consider them sufficiently rooted in the new 

 soil, uncover them during the day, and continue to stop the shoots 

 as they may require. Keep the wood as short-jointed as possible at 

 this stage of their growth, by having the plants always near the 

 glass, and freely ventilated. Do not think of further shifting them 

 till the following February. The most suitable place for them 

 during the winter is the top shelf of a greenhouse, or a pit that is 

 heated by hot water or otherwise. The most destructive enemy they 

 have to contend against during the winter mouths is damp, which 

 creates mildew, and the green-fly. Fumigation with tobacco is the 

 only remedy for the destruction of the green-fly ; and, by way of 

 economy, if the other plants in the house do not require to be fumi- 

 gated, then put the verbenas into a box or baud-light for the purpose, 

 and when you consider the fly on them destroyed, give the plants a 

 gentle syringing, after which replace them in their former position. 

 If you are anxious to have them in full bloom by the latter end of 

 May or beginning of June, you must, if the plants are thrifty, shift 

 them in the month of February into their flowering pots ; and that 

 you may get them well established in the same, let their pots be 

 plunged into a mild bottom-heat. They will, from this time till their 

 flower-buds appear, require to be grown in a warm moist atmosphere, 

 and their shoots stopped often, if they become long-jointed. 



As regards the style of training, that is a matter of taste. I 

 have had them trained to a balloon trellis with good effect, and equally 

 so on a flat surface, with a slight rise in the centre, similar to the 

 mode adopted by the growers of zonal geraniums. Thus treated, I 

 have seen some very large plants grown in nine-inch pots, and literally 

 covered with bloom. In their final potting they must have plenty 

 of drainage ; any kind of soil that is sweet, and of a light loamy 

 texture, well incorporated with decayed manure or leaf-mould, with 

 some silver sand, will suit them. 



