290 



JOURNAL OF HOKTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ October 17, 1887. 



anether disease which destroys the leaves. My Roses have had 

 but little of this in the jiresent year, chiefly .it the base of the 

 plants. I am not sure that it is a fungus at all ; it may arise 

 from changes in the atmosphere. I never observed it on Eoses 

 under glass. 



Chlprii^ix, or yellow-green sickness, is the effect of damage 

 done to the leaves. The best way to stop it is to talse up the 

 plants, shake them out, and fresh plant them ; this will stop 

 the sap, which otherwise will affect the trees. Chalky ground 

 is said to be conducive to it. My trees came from Kushton 

 much affected by it, but I made them perfectly healthy, with 

 new foliage, before the winter set in. 1 planted 1100 Manetti 

 Roses between August 2ith and September r2th, ISdCi ; one 

 hundred of them were not much better than pot plants. I 

 lost last winter about thirty plants, and the others, pot plants 

 included, are now lofty trees. 



Honrydnr, which is a viscous secretion, and not the drop- 

 pings ol aphides or insects as some suppose, must be washed 

 off as soon as the slime appears, or it will harden and stop the 

 pores of the leaves and destroy them. Water at the roots and 

 plenty of it over the leaves is the preventive and the cure. 

 Stirring the ground lightly over the roots will also do good. 

 Bees are fond of honeydew, and a year that abounds in honey- 

 dew is always a good honey year. I beUeve excessive drought 

 to be the cause of it. 



INSECTS. 

 The chief are aphides, the budworm, and the anther sawfly. 

 Catch and kill all the aphides you can in the spring, and fall of 

 the year — in fact, at all times, and keep the trees well syringed, 

 or watered over the leaves. Again, " Water is the best thing." 

 KiUiug by hand is the best remedy for the other two. Manetti 

 Roses produce so many buds that I never trouble about them. 

 The sawfly is rare with me. I have had, however, two of my 

 trees of Triompbe de Eeunes "fretted" by them. I have not 

 seen here two dozen aphides since the spring. — W. F. E-ui- 



CLYFFE. 



"WTNTER THEATMENT OF PEACHES, 

 NECTARINES, AND -VPEICOTS IN POTS. 



The article by Mr. Douglas in your last Number is sound 

 and practical, but I beg to protest against wintering trees of 

 the above-named kinds in the open ah'. It may be practised 

 by young cultivators for two or three years with impunity, but 

 when we have, as is often the case, heavy, drenching lains, 

 severe weather, and deep snow, which as it thaws completely 

 saturates the earth in the pots, mischief ensues ; besides this, 

 although frost may not apparently injure the shoots, yet as is 

 the case with wall trees after severe winters, they are to a 

 certain extent paralysed, and liable in spring to the attacks of 

 aphides. I tried the experiment some ten or twelve years 

 since, but have never repeated it. I often read in the American 

 papers about the shoots of the Peach trees, although ripe and 

 hard, being injured by severe frost, and dropping their blossom- 

 buds. All potted ti-ees of the above-named kinds should be in 

 the orchard-house by the end of October, the pots placed close 

 to each other, and covered with some dry hay ; they are then 

 safe tiU March. There must be something peculiar in the soil 

 used by Mr. Douglas. In the hottest weather we give water 

 but once a-day, sprinkling the paths once or twice. 



The surface dressing is placed so as to form a concavity 

 round the stem of the tree, holding a large quantity of water, 

 which, descending through the centre of the mass of earth, com- 

 pletely saturates it. Without this concavity workmen often 

 make watering a sham. 



With respect to the size of pots, the 15-inch pot is the juste 

 milii'u. It is true that as large fruit may be grown in 11-inch 

 pots, but not so many of them. The 18-inch pot is here the 

 maximum size, and grand trees are grown in pots of that size. 

 They are seldom moved, but are easily lifted by two men with 

 two stakes, attucbed at one end by a stout piece of cord. It is 

 not bad practice to place Peach and Apricot trees out of doors 

 after the fruit is gathered. Their shoots become rel, and their 

 leaves healthy; they only s-ei'in to have ripened their shoots 

 better than those kept in the house. As to blossom-buds there 

 .uo ah\a\.s loo m.iuy. la that respect I have never seen any dif- 

 ference between those kept in the house and those turned out ; 

 but the removal of the early-ripening sorts makes room, and is 

 the occasion of those left in the house receiving more light 

 and air. 



I repeat, all the trees I have alluded to should be in the 

 house before the end of October, and dry and warm for the 



winter. Mr. Douglas will, I am sure, excuse my differing from 

 him on one point, and he will confer a great favour on your 

 readers if he will give the size of the pots his Vines are growing 

 in, and his mode of treatment ; it must be sound and good, or 

 he would not produce such bunches of Black Hamburghs. 



I beg leave here to confess that it is very agreeable to my 

 feelings, now I am old, to read sound articles on orchard-house 

 culture, so scoffed at in its early days. I have also lived to see 

 the Manetti Eose stock, after many years of abuse, now highly 

 popular both in England and America, and again Pears on 

 Quince stocks, which twenty-five or thirty years ago, some quasi 

 clever people thought me a little crazed to advocate, are now to 

 be found iu nil gardens where the chmate and soil suit them, 

 and where the cultivator is well up iu modern fruit cultivation. 

 — Thos. Eiveks. 



VINES AND VINE BORDERS— NATURAL 

 TEMPERATURES. 



Familiar only with the Vine in an English vinery, could 

 any one understand the strength and luxuriance of growth 

 alluded to in the prophetic beneujction addressed to Judah — 

 " Binding his foal unto the Vine, and his ass's colt unto the 

 choice Vine ?" Its thick and fleahy roots penetrating into the 

 deep fissures of the limestone rocks enabled it to endure the 

 long drought between the latter and the former rains. In- 

 different alike to the heats of summer and the frosts of winter, 

 perfectly adapted to their stony soil and variable climate, its 

 vigour and never-failing fruitfulness were subjects of continual 

 reference and grateful admiration to the whole Jewish nation. 



A close and damp atmosphere of 100', charged with pestilent 

 vapours from sulphur-bedaubed hot-water pipes, could scarcely 

 be so conducive to the healthy growth of the Vine as the pure 

 and transparent air of Samaria, which enabled Jotham to stand 

 en the summit of Gerizim and speak to the men of Shechem in 

 the valley below. We take the strongest climbing plant of the 

 temperate zone, we plant it in a shallow and porous border, 

 resting upon Caithness pavement or flagstones, supported on 

 brick pillars. We enclose half this border within four white- 

 washed walls, and train every shoot and every leaf of the Vine 

 to receive the full glare of the sun through the glass, while the 

 shade temperature beneath is equal to that of Western Africa. 

 Such treatment may bo scientific, but it is not natural. It is, 

 however, the treatment recommended by Mr. Thomson, and 

 endorsed by half the gardeners in the kingdom. 



The highest coast temperature registered on board H.M.S. 

 " Wilberforce " during the expedition for the suppression of the 

 slave trade was 84° Fah. on the '20th of August, 18-il. The 

 highest temperature registered on board H.M.S. "Albert"when 

 upwards of three hundred miles inland was 92° Fah. on the 

 26th of September following. These temperatures were taken 

 at the end of the rainy season, and within 9° of the equator. 



I am somewhat disappointed that those correspondents who 

 were so eager to give their opinions on this subject on the ap- 

 pearance of Mr. Wills'e extraordinary letter about the Vine 

 borders he intended making at Huntroyde, should have nothing 

 more to say on a matter so interesting to the readers of the 

 Journal as the proper cultivation of the Vine. To myself it 

 is becoming a question of some importance, for I have now 

 '259 Vines planted in inside borders, made with the ordinary 

 soil of my giirden and a small addition of stable manure. Of 

 this number 104 were grown at the bottom of a north wall till 

 the first week in August, when they were taken into the houses 

 and planted without even lemoving the drainage. Their pro- 

 gress has been perfectly satisfactory, and the wood will be fully 

 matured by the middle of December. They will be started 

 again in January, with the certainty of ripening a good crop 

 about the end of June, without injury to the season's growth, 

 or to their future well-doing. 



In Mr. Thomson's treatise on the Vine I find it stated, that 

 if a Vine be allowed to grow at one season of the year it will 

 assert its right to rest at another. Now, the trees and plants 

 of a temperate climate are arrested in their growth because of 

 the absence of the light and heat necessary to their continued 

 development. Within the tropics the same eft'ect is produced 

 by the dry season. The growth of the Vine may be divided 

 into three stages. In the first stage the shoots are rapidly ex- 

 tended till the leaves attain their full size. The second is 

 almost wholly given to the swelling and ripening of the fruit. 

 In the third the growth is as great as in the first, but the in- 

 crease is as much in size as in length and in a proper tempe- 



