98 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 187 i. 



A Reader. — Cucumbers — Sion House Improved, Volunteer, Telegraph. 

 Melons, red-fleshed — Scarlet Gem, Malvern Hall; green-fleshed — Bromham 

 Hall, Golden Queen, Cocoa-nut, Onion, Dr Hogg. 



Mr M'Kenzie. — Your questions embrace very wide subjects. The cause of 

 canker is generally considered to be a cold wet subsoil. Keasoning from these 

 premises, thorough drainage and planting on slightly-raised mounds of earth to 

 increase the temperature of the soil is the remedy. Some sorts of fruit-trees are 

 much more subject to canker than others, and such varieties as thrive best in any 

 such soil as referred to above, should predominate in forming a collection. Crown 

 and whip grafting are the best methods of grafting Pears and Apples. 



A Workman. — If you cannot exclude frost from your frame, you cannot do 

 better than turn your attention to hardy spring bulbs for spring flowers, such as 

 Snowdrops, Crocus, Hyacinths, Tulips, Narcissus, Primroses, &c. These would 

 keep your frame gay in spring, and to replace them in summer you could 

 perhaps manage to keep over winter, inside your window, such as Fuchsias, 

 Pelargoniums, Hydrangeas, Lily of the Nile, which, mixed with some of the 

 curious-looking succulent plants treated of in our pages this month, would 

 make your frame interesting in summer. 



Maiden Pear-Trees and Pansies. — As you wish your trees to grow into 

 pyramids, train quite upright the main shoot, shortening back at once to where 

 the wood is well ripened and firm, and shorten back the lateral shoots at the base 

 to six or eight buds. 



Pansy Box (Old Subscriber). — A Pansy Box to hold twelve blooms should be 

 134 inches long x 9^ inches wide, and the case for holding the stand, with a 

 cover to fit after the blooms are placed, should measure overall ih inches at back 

 and 3i inches in front. The box should be in two parts. The part on which the 

 blooms are laid should be made separate from the box that holds the stand, and 

 on a level with the rim of the outer case, the holes to be 3 i inches each way dis- 

 tant, and to be of an oval form, and the tubes for holding the water should be 

 If deep, and of a circular form and soldered to the bottom of the oval holes. Care 

 should be taken that the tubes should have a good slope to front at the bottom, 

 and not to be filled more than two parts of water when the blooms are put in. 



Alexander. — Shorten back your Vines to about 3 feet at once, and two days 

 after dress the wounds with styptic, to prevent a chance of their bleeding. To 

 cut down to the weak buds, under your circumstances, is not to be recommended. 

 Your Vines should be left sufficiently long to reach to the top of the fruit-sash of 

 your vinery. 



Education of Gardeners. — We do not see our way to open our pages to 

 tbe discussion of this subject, just now at any rate. There has been a deal of 

 nonsense uttered anent it ; and all that we have heard said about it of recent 

 years, we consider greatly inferior to what Mr Loudon wrote about it many 

 years ago. 



Subscriber, Cambridge. — If your Lily of the Valley has produced foliage and 

 no bloom, the crowns must have been too weak and immature. Grow it on care- 

 fully this season, and if the crowns and leaves are very thick in the pots, thin out 

 the weakest of them and top-dress with rotten manure. AVhen well hardened off 

 plunge the pots outdoors in a sunny place, and attend carefully to their water- 

 ing, and keep the foliage healthy as long as possible ; and unless it is now very 

 weak indeed, it will make fine blooming crowns for next year. Do not expose it 

 till all danger from frost is past. 



