258 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



foliage free from insect pests is an important matter, for when 

 allowed to get smothered with thrip or any other pest, it is simply 

 impossible to have a healthy growth. This done, place in the green- 

 house until the bloom is past its best, and then repot. Large shifts 

 are not required ; but extra large and vigorous plants may be trans- 

 ferred to eight-inch pots ; but the principal part of the stock will 

 be better in six-inch size. Place in the bottom of each pot a layer 

 of medium-sized crocks, and cover them with a layer of the roughest 

 portion of the compost. This done, turn out of the pots, remove 

 the old crocks, and loosen the roots round the outside of the ball 

 carefully with a piece of stick with a blunt point. This enables the 

 roots to strike more freely into the fresh soil. When plants that 

 have become pot-bound are shifted without loosening the outside 

 roots, it is by no means unusual to find scarcely any roots in the 

 fresh stuff twelve months afterwards. Firm potting is also an 

 essential feature ; and the soil must be rammed in as firm as possi- 

 ble with the potting-stick, or the water will run through it and 

 leave the old ball quite dry. Some growers prefer peat and sand 

 alone ; but equal proportions of silky loam, full of fibre, and fibrous 

 peat, mixed with about a sixth part of sharp silver sand, is by far 

 the best compost yet known. Peat alone is too poor, and turns 

 sour too soon for azaleas. 



Azaleas are strictly greenhouse plants, but they receive immense 

 benefit from the assistance of a genial growing temperature when 

 making their growth in the spring. When the stock is fresh potted, 

 place it in a temperature of about 65°, and maintain a healthy, growing 

 atmosphere by frequently sprinkling the paths and stages; also 

 syringe overhead lightly morning and afternoon. Water sparingly, 

 because the roots are too much deranged to take up a large supply ; 

 and, to keep up the balance, the evaporation must be checked in 

 the manner pointed out above. Sufficient, however, must be applied 

 at each watering to reacli to the bottom of the ball. Hundreds of 

 azaleas are killed annually through improper watering, for they are 

 remarkably impatient of being tampered with at the roots. It is a 

 very common practice to give just sufficient to wet the soil to a 

 depth of three or four inches below the surface, without troubling 

 to ascertain whether the lower portion is wetted or not. When 

 once the lower part of the ball gets dust-dry, it is no easy task to 

 moisten it without dipping it into a vessel of water. When any of 

 the plants look sickly, or evince any flaccidity in the leaves, and the 

 soil is moist on the top, turn it out of the pot, and in nineteen in- 

 stances out of twenty, the soil will be dust-dry at a few inches 

 from the surface. The water should always run through the hole in 

 the bottom of the pot after its application, and you should continue 

 to fill up the space on the surface until it does. Guard against 

 giving too much water at the roots, for that is as injurious as an 

 insufficient supply. 



Give liberal ventilation as soon as the stock has recovered from 

 the check received in repotting, and increase it as the growth pro- 

 gresses. Although a genial growing atmosphere is essential to a 

 healthy growth, it must not be kept too close, or the shoots will be 



