IRISH GARDENING. 



149 



that they are not worth replantinsf, and should therefore 

 he thrown away. Many ciiUivators do not attempt to 

 force crowns the first year from insertion of cuttin.sjs, 

 believing that it pays in the long run to let the plants 

 gather strength by giving them the good start of a I wo- 

 seasons growth. 



Sea kale may be also propagated by seeds. The 

 " seeds " of commerce are really the fruits, and before 

 sowing the husk should be broken. The seeds are 

 sown in spring in drills drawn one to two inches deep in 

 carefully pulverised soil. Next year the young plants 

 are transplanted to rich, carefully tilled soil, eighteen 

 inches apart, in rows about two feet asunder, and the 

 surface regularly hoed throughout the season. Crowns 

 for forcing may be had at the end of the second, and 

 certainly at the end of the third, year. 



Sea kale, as we have said in starting, is a delicious 

 and wholesome vegetable, and ought to be far more 

 extensively grown in Ireland than is at present at- 

 tempted. It is generally considered to be an expensive 

 luxury in the way of food, but it really netd not be so, 

 and anyone following in practice the foregoing instruc- 

 tions can easily secure a cheap and plentiful supplv for 

 the dinner table. 



Current Topics. 



a 



Hy E. Knowi.din, F.R.H.S. 



LORD ROSEBERRV gave lust month a delighl- 

 j ful speech." (Vide Irish Gardening, page 

 1,^6.) That was so. .'\nd it was rather nice 

 of hini, too, ior we, gardeners, poor men, seldom get a 

 pat on the back or anywhere else ; in fact, that is from the 

 high and mighty, and Srmall wonder that we are some- 

 what apt, like the Hottentots, to butter one another all 

 over. Well ! well ! My Lord says of us gardeners— " If I 

 were a ruler, which, thank heaven, I am not, I would do 

 all I could to multiply and increase such men." O Lord ! 

 Thank heaven you're not, unless your Lordship would 

 multiply and increase the gardens as well ; and even 

 I hen, in our experience, the gardener is very well able to 

 tlo the multiplying -ind increasing business — very 

 well, indeed, without any help from the peerage or 

 even a grandmotherl}' government. Gardening, of 

 course, increases, but situations for skilled men do not, 

 and since we last effervesced in these pages another 

 place not a hundred miles from Booterstow-n is lost to 

 the mere man, where not only a lady is engaged as 

 gardener, but another fair one officiates as her foreman 

 — Place .Hux Dames. 



A recent run through the so-called "Garden of England " 

 revealed the fact that commercial gardening is in a had 

 way, and this apart from fruit farming. London's six 

 millions -oris it five ? we didn't count them — want a lot, 

 of course, yet somehow supplies in a few instances 

 exceed demand, and even the manufacturer of bedding 

 plants, the gorgeous geranium, and luxurious lobelia 

 overdid it this season to the tune of holding back even 

 far into July when big lots were put into Covent gardens 

 not to be got rid of at any price. It seems that only the 

 pioneers oi these industries have made fortunes, and on 

 Bexley Heath, where Philip Ladds opened the game 

 forty years ago by covering acres with glass for the 



productio.i o( popular plants by the million for the 

 million, the Kexley Heathen has now changed the crop 

 for "Qs," "Toms," and " Mels," the trade clipping 

 for cucumbers, tomatoes and melons, and for these 

 prices at the end of August wore not only cut to the 

 finest hut with "Mcls" had touched the vanishing 

 point. It was certainly a pretty sight to see span roofs 

 (or is it rooves?) 250 feet long by 30 feet wide clustered 

 with thousands of melons in all their golden glory, the 

 fruits averaging 2% lbs. in weight ; but as we patted the 

 grower on the back during the view, and a big van was 

 being packed with them, along the wires the signal ran, 

 " send no more mels, no market." No reason to ask in 

 the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, in the words of 

 scripture, why do the Heathens rage? 



In the same neighbourhood, b\- the way, we were 

 pleased with the common acacia, Robiiiia psciid-iiicicia, 

 as a street tree, and for this purpose, even for town 

 purposes, the graceful foliaged subject seems peculiarly 

 well adapted, as does the Tree of Heaven (Ailantlms 

 glnndiilosn). Measuring leaves of the latter on six feet 

 growths made this season from hard cut back lops we 

 found them four feet long, and en route for Kew, via 

 Hammersmith, was noticed grand avenues of the 

 Oriental Plane. Kew- is too big to talk much about (the 

 Glasnevin of England we allude to), and Kew is stately as 

 one approaches it by the noble entrance from Kew 

 Green ; but Kew is tiring, and after several hours 

 inspecting its treasures, including the Victoria regia, 

 which could not hold a candle, let alone a child on a 

 chair, as we have seen it depicted to specimens 

 we have seen in Glasnevin, we came away from the 

 English Glasnevin more than satisfied with our Irish 

 Kew. And then the great while sepulchre — we mean 

 city, or, to give it its full style and title, The Imperial 

 Intern,ational Exhibition, which in our experience was 

 not only a misnomer, but somewhat of a fraud, half, or 

 more than half, of its paltry, pinnacled palaces being 

 closed, international being chiefly represented by the 

 Children of Israel who were modestly trading in two- 

 pemiy trinkets marked at four shillings, and clearing them 

 off at half price, "only two sheeling" ; or the catering, 

 which, like our own little international fiutler, seemed 

 to have fallen to the lion's share. But Paul Crampel was 

 good ; fine masses of big plants, a blaze of bloom, the 

 only redeeming feature, to om- thinking, of the plastered 

 palaces over which might have been written — " Ichabod, 

 their glory, hath departed." However, everybodv says 

 its glories will be revived next year when re-whitewashed 

 and Japaimed. 



When doctors differ, and gardeners deride each 

 others practice in the way of fruit tree pruning, sunnner 

 pruning, winter pruning, all sorts of pruning, and no 

 pruning at all, who is to decide ■:* This is a phrase of 

 culture in which we seem to be in the same fix as the 

 old farmer at the audit dinner with the squire's claret, 

 " get no forrader." Nevertheless, no one seems to 

 question the wisdom of root pruning, especially with 

 young specimens who.se one object in life appears to be 

 timber Gross growth of wood and gross growth of 

 roots seems interdependent, but is this the result of 

 prior treatment of young fruit trees, of neglect, or 

 too much kindness? Truly, we flatter ourselves in 

 being so much smarter than a past generation who 



