March 14, 1867. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



193 



by. Sometimes they drop off from want of regular watering, 

 or from attacks of aphides, &c. Who can tell us why they 

 should occur in some places, and bloom-buds in others? 

 M. Grin asserts that he can fix them at the base of spurs by 

 bisecting the stipularies at the points of the shoots. I do not 

 go so far, but venture to state, that if pruning by alternate 

 shoots be practised (as recommended by me in the " Modern 

 Peach- Pruner") — that is, if two shoots be left on each spur 

 and these shoots be stopped at four leaves as soon as six full- 

 sized leaves are developed, and the second growths at two more 

 leaves as soon as four more leaves are seen, at the winter prun- 

 ing an abundance of buds will be seen ; and if then the best- 

 looking shoot be left long to bear, and the other be cut to tsvo 

 wood-buds, or eyes, for succession, the want of terminal leaf- 

 buds complained of by " Wvesiee," is reduced to a minimum. 

 You should always have two shoots on a spur. — T. B.".£H.iUT.] 



AVOIDING CUCUMBER FAILURES. 



From the symptoms detailed by " As Old Subsckiuer," at 

 page 86, I should be inclined to say that his Cucumbers are too 

 wet at the root, or have too great a bulk of inert soil to grow in. 

 It does not seem possible that they lack bottom heat. If this 

 were the case, it would be a sufficient explanation of the failure. 

 ■Cucumbers v.'ill certainly fail as detailed, let the bottom heat 

 be never so well regulated, if the soil be sodden or efi'ete. I 

 hope your correspondent will fu;give me, if I proceed " to lay 

 down the law " rather couiideutly for the management of 

 winter Cucumbers. 



In the first jdace, I recommend his box for holding the soil 

 to be of wood; the bottom of ours, two-inch plank, has lasted 

 eight years. Secondly, The box should not be more than 

 18 inches wide, or at the very outside 2 feet. Thirdly, The 

 depth of soil from September to February, should not exceed 

 '.) inches. The reason for this is simply that the plants should 

 at all times thi'oughout the winter have a perfect command 

 through the medium of their roots over the moisture in the 

 soil, so as to necessitate watering twice a-week, or once at least. 



Perhaps a few facts in illustration will assist your corre- 

 spondent. From such a box, a section of which is just IS inches 

 square, and its length 40 feet, heated by one pipe, we have at 

 all times abundance of Cucumbers. Wehaxe had plants for 

 two years in bearing, the stem becoming as thick as a walking- 

 stick, corrugated, and rough as cork. Plants turned out of pots 

 in September have been bearing steadily siuse the first week 

 in November; in fact, their fault is that they set too many 

 fruit, if that which is so easily remedied be a fault. The plants 

 in such a box are easily rested by being kept rather dry, and 

 -grow with fresh vigour when treated to plenty of water ; they 

 never go off as detailed by your correspondent, because the 

 growth is firm and short-jointed. I may remark that our pit 

 is a low one sunk in the ground, the glass very flat, and lean- 

 to. Such, however, I do not by any means recommend ; the 

 sun scarcely ever strikes on the soil, which is a fault, no doubt, 

 but cannot be remedied without considerable expense. 



I am confident that more Cucumbers are unfruitful, and go 

 off diseased in winter from the cause indicated, than from any 

 other — namely, from having too large a bed of soil to grow in ; 

 and the remedy clearly is to grow them in narrower boxes with 

 plenty of drainage, and the bottom heat unconfined — that is to 

 say, ventilation must reach the roots. Although I have never 

 been obliged to do so, I have no doubt but Cucumbers could 

 be grown very successfully in pots in winter, because the roots 

 eould be kept together, and the plants would be completely 

 imder control. — W. D. Wynyakd. 



' till the plsnts showed fruit, when they began dying back and 

 flagging. We at once took out the border and found the sods 

 on the rubble as full of water as they could well be. This was 

 on account of their being too sun-dried to allow the water to 



' drain off. We replaced them with new sods, repaired the 

 border, and since then the plants have done well. 



I should have mentioned that in consequence of the border 

 being so saturated, the soil was full of worms, which rendered 

 it too sour fur any vegetation. To destroy them we water with 

 a mixture of mustard and lime, which kills them at once, and 

 does the plants good. If " An Old Sudsceiber " were to take 



I the water out of his tank, lower the bottom heat to from 7.5* 



; to 80°, and keep a top heat of between 80° and 8.5°, taking care 

 at the same time that his border be properly drained, and the 

 soil in a good, sweet condition, and free from worms, he will, I 

 am sure, not complain long of so little success in the winter 



i culture of the Cucumber. — Thomas East, n'olfetonllumc, Dor- 

 chester. 



I n.AVE witnessed in some of my plants the symptoms de- 

 scribed by " An Old SuBser.iiiER,'' but at a different season. 

 I have two houses in which I grow Cucumbers. One for early 

 work is about 11 feet wide, 11 or 12 feet high at the back, and 

 4 feet high in the front, and is heated by hot water. In this 

 house I have never witnessed the disease referred to. The 

 other house is a low span-roof used for bedding plants in the 

 spring, and planted with Cucumbers at the end of May. The 

 Cucumbers receive very little heat except sun heat, of which I 

 give them plenty. No\v, in this house 1 have frequently seen 

 the disease, from which the plants seldom recover. I ascribe 

 its presence to the damp, stagnant state of the atmosphere in 

 the house, while in the other case I think they are free from 

 it, because the house is larger, and the circulation of air quicker ; 

 but I must say the house for early work is not a profitable one, 

 because of the great amount of fuel it takes to heat it. — Ivo. 



EARLY PEAS. 

 Your corre.«pondent " FiONxnc," whatever may have been 

 his intentions, must certainly have misled many readers of 

 the .Journal who have not tried our new Early Pea, had his 

 reported trial and failure been permitted to pass unchallenged. 

 We now discover, after reading his letter in the issue of 

 \ February 28th, that from an imperfect knowledge of varieties 

 he has confused our new " First Crop " Pea wilh an old 

 variety introduced by us about sixteen years since, and then 

 named "Carter's Earliest.'' Your correspondent, however, 

 thought well to insert the word " first," making it read 

 "Carter's First Early;" and as he does not infoim us that 

 the Peas he procured were in sealed packets, we can only con- 

 clude he was supplied with the old variety by his seedsmen. This 

 sort we do not now maintain to be a first early, as there have 

 been numerous improvements in early Peas since its intro- 

 duction, but " EoNNOc " is again in error when he states the 

 " quality " of our Pea to be inferior to Sangster's No. 1, as 

 its general cultivation in preference to the last-named variety 

 is abundant evidence of its superiority. — James Carter & Co. 



My experience is verj- different from that of your correspon- 

 dent '■KoxNoc." I sowed on the same daj' Carter's First 

 Crop, Dillistoue's Early, and Sangster's No. 1 Peas side by 

 side on just the same aspect as "Konnoc," and Carter's First 

 Crcjp was the first to bloom, and three days earlier te gather. — ■ 

 Caleb SiLCOOii, Gardener to T. Wardle, Esq., Macclesfield. 



"An Old Subscriber's" Cucumbers appear to me to have 

 failed owing to his allowing the border to become overcharged 

 with hot steam from stagnant water in the tank, as well as 

 from over-watering, and, it may be, allowing worms to breed 

 in the border. 



I do not like heated water under early Cucumbers. Two 

 yea.rs ago I had some pits of Cucumbers in just such a con- 

 dition as that which "An Old Subscriber" describes, the 

 plants flagging and dying oil, do what I would. I took the 

 water out of the tank, lowered the temperature under the 

 border, gave more heat above, and presently there was plenty 

 of fruit. Last October we made up our bed for Cucumbers in 

 a house 22 feet long by 12 wide ; the border was covered with 

 slate, on which was placed 9 inches of rubble, then some good 

 thick sods, and above these 2 feet of compost. All went on well 



CURBANT TREE CULTURE. 



After reading the paper on Currant culture in a late number 

 of the Journal. I think it may not be amiss to say a few words 

 upon this subject for the benefit of young amateurs. 



I have several standard Currant "trees which tor some years 

 had borne either sparingly or not at all, and I had pretty well 

 determined upon grubbing them up ; but I thought I woidd 

 give them another year's chance under different treatment, for 

 it occurred to me that if Mr. Rivers's plan of summer-pinching 

 .as detailed in his " Miniature Fruit Garden '' were so good 

 for Apples, Pears, and Plums, why not also for the humbler 

 Currant? Accordingly, throughout the summer of 1865 I kept 

 them regularly pinched in strictly after Mr. Rivers's directions 

 for the other trees named, and in 1866 I was fully rewarded for 



