iSyo.] HOW I GROW MY ASTERS. 491 



fruit. If the season is good, and the tree in perfect health, more fruit 

 will set than is required to form a crop. This being the case, it is 

 necessary to go over the trees when the fruit is about the size of Peas, 

 to remove all superfluous or badly-formed fruit, leaving the best ones 

 single, and at distances of from 4 to 6 inches apart all over the tree ; the 

 small-growing varieties at the former distance, and the larger-growing at 

 the latter. Even at these distances there will be four times the number 

 of fruit necessary ; but as the crop is not secure till after the stoning 

 period, they can remain and be afterwards thinned out to 9 inches and 

 12 inches apart respectively, according to the size of the fruit. At 

 these distances the weight of crop and quality of the fruit will be 

 better than if less space is allowed them. James M'Millan. 



(To be continued.) 



HOW I GROW MY ASTERS. 



I am both a grower and exhibitor of the Aster, and at the end of the 

 season I take up my pen to detail my experiences of the sorts I, dur- 

 ing the summer, took in hand for the purpose of growing for exhibi- 

 tion. I take it for granted some of your readers are exhibitors of 

 flowers, and probably among them will be found those who grow the 

 Aster for competition. I hope, therefore, to make my remarks accept- 

 able to some of these. 



Much as I admire and gloat over the superb beauty of a stand of 

 finely-finished blooms of the quilled or German Aster, I am fully alive 

 to the fact that much high feeding and disbudding is necessary to 

 produce these fine flowers. I don't take kindly to them somehow. 

 As a general rule, they are dull-coloured, and, unless the plants are 

 protected, they are apt to have a cloudy and even dirty appearance. I 

 have given up growing the quilled Asters, both for exhibition and 

 decorative purposes : the latter, because of the reasons just named ; 

 the former, because I got tired of almost entirely stripping my plants 

 of buds and side shoots for the sake of obtaining two or three flowers 

 on each, fit for the exhibition-table. One has to manure, and water, 

 and shade, and bestow the most careful tending, just to obtain a few 

 blooms, which may perhaps fail one just when they are most needed. 



In what are known as the flat-petalled Asters I get something to 

 my mind ; and I grow them, and enjoy the rich full harvest of 

 flowers they yield. Of these I grow four types — viz., Truffaut's 

 Peony -flowered, which give both reflexed and incurved flowers of 

 large size, and in good variety of colours ; the Victoria, which I have 

 no hesitation in pronouncing the finest Aster in cultivation; the 



