14 



JOUENAL OF HOETICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GAllDENEIi. 



[ July 4, 1865. 



bad luiinagement to occupy glass houses with plants of in- 

 terest inferior to such as are plentiful in the open air. It 

 is not desirable, however, to crowd the houses with flower- 

 ing plants, the aim should rather be to have a moderate num- 

 ber of handsome specimens effectivelj- arranged, which will 

 .yield more pleasure than a greaer amoiuit of tfloral display 

 from plants of no individual merit. A thin arrangement of 

 pot plants will also be advisable on account of the permanent 

 occupants of the beds in the conservatory, which at this season 

 should be allowed plenty of space in order to secure strong and 

 well-ripened wood, without which they need not be expected to 

 bloom finely. Use every means to keep down insects. Give clear 

 weak liquid manure to young gi-owing specimens, and repot any 

 that arc intended to have another shift this season, so as to 

 have the pots well filled with roots before winter. Maintain a 

 moist gi-owiug atmosphere in the gi-cenhouse, and s^Tinge 

 vigorously any plant at all infested with red spider. 



STOVE. 



Encoiu-age backward plants of Orchids with plenty of heat 

 and moisture while that can be done safely. See that plants 

 on blocks and in baskets are properly supplied with moisture at 

 the roots. To prevent any mistake in this matter carefully 

 examine every plant at least once a-week, and immerse any 

 found to be dry in tepid water until the material about the 

 roots shall have become well soaked. Syringe lightlv morning 

 and evening, and sprinkle floors, &c., in' order to keep the at- 

 mosphere thoroughly moist. Here a number of Clerodendrons 

 and such like softwooded plants, will now be showing bloom, 

 and with the late-blooming Ixoras, Dipladenias, Echites, &c., 

 this house will be very interesting for some time to come. 

 Weak clear manure water should be used here once or twice 

 a-week, as well to sprinlde the house as to water the plants. 



PITS AND rr..\MES. 

 Alpine plants in pots should now have a little attention. 

 They should now be collected together ; some mil require 

 division at the roots to increase the species. Manv will require 

 weeding and top-dressing, and others shifting into larger-sized 

 pots ; finally plunge the pots up to the rim in sand or finely 

 sifted coal ashes. They should now be regularly syringed vrith 

 clear water early in the morning and late every evening. — 

 W. Ke.«e. 



DOINGS OF THE LAST M'EEK, 



KITCHEN GARDEN. 



Wateriiii/.—Om- chief work has been to render our little 

 water as useful as possible, by applying it close to the roots, 

 and either mulching or throw-in'g dry soil over the moist surface 

 as soon as possible. Jlere surface "watering, in such weather, 

 is of ven- little benefit, except for newly-planted-out things, so 

 as merely to refresh the foliage, as alluded to last week in the 

 ornamental department. There have been signs of a refreshing 

 rain, but as yet none has visited us ; but on this morning of 

 the 29th the barometer has fallen rapidly, and we hope 

 that at last we shall have rain, which will greatly benefit all 

 field and garden crops. In om- stifiish, deep-stirred, mode- 

 ratcly-em-iched soil, the crops, especially those helped with 

 mnlching, are standing well ; but in many cottagers' gardens 

 the Beans are refusing to be more than bare stalks, and the 

 Potatoes are ripening their haulm with but few tubers, and 

 these refusing to swell to any size. Too many persons are 

 slow to learn the advantage of surface-stirring in such weather, 

 and deep stirring before planting. We lately saw some beds 

 of vegetables and flowers with the surface cracked all over, 

 and what was not cracked, pretty well as hard as iron ; and 

 the wonder was that, with almost constant evening sprinklings 

 of water, the plants refused to grow. A good forking on the 

 surface \iould have been better than all the drizzling from 

 the water-pot. The watering, if given to reach the roots, would 

 have been useful, and then, if the sm-face had been stirred to 

 keep it in, the one watering would have been worth a dozen or 

 a score of these di-izzles on the surface, which merely 

 eucoiuraged roots to come to the sm-face, to be burned up bv the 

 next day's sun. 



An old friend of ours is a gi-eat advocate of the sprinkling- 

 overhead system, and wonders, though the plants "seem re- 

 freshed by his kindly-meant process, that next day, if anvtliiug, 

 they look the worse from it. As to getting our walking-stick into 

 the ground, that was out of the question ; we might as well 

 have tried a plate of iron. Good stout arms would be needed to 

 break it with a fork. No vronder that Cabbages and CauUflowers 



bolted, instead of laying a good foundation for good heads ; 

 no better plan could be devised for causing them to flower and 

 seed early. As a rule mere surface watering, except for re- 

 freshing foliage, and chiefly of freshly-turned-ont plants, is of 

 little or no benefit, and often does harm even in well-stirred 

 gi-ound, because it breaks the line of conduction and evapora- 

 tion, so that the roots are deprived of the moistm-e from beneath 

 which they would otherwise receive. We have great faith in 

 the moisture that is stored up in the earth, and wliich will be 

 absorbed by the roots of plants, as it passes them, in proportion 

 to the heat applied at the surface. The mere damping of the 

 surface arrests, for a time — that is, until the surface is again 

 dried — the line of communication between the moisture beneath 

 and the sun and atmosphere above : hence it often happens 

 that, after a slight shower in summer, which merely refreshes 

 the foliage, and slightly damps the surface, if followed at once 

 by a bright hot smi, the plants, as soon as the Httle sprinkling 

 has evaporated, wiU seem to suffer more than before for a few 

 hours, because, for a time, the roots have been deprived of 

 their supply of moistm-e from beneath. Hence, also, the 

 difference between natural and artificial watering. In the 

 former case the whole atmosphere, with its clouds, seems as 

 refreshing as a shower bath. In a bright sunny day the atmo- 

 sphere, if we do not do anj-thing in the way of mulching or 

 surface-stirring to prevent it, will hasten to take away the 

 moisture which we give. A dull or a drizzUng day, or late in the 

 evening, are, therefore the best times for watering. Sprinkling 

 overhead in the sun, as alluded to last week, is merely an 

 exceptional process, when, having secm-ed enough of moistm-e 

 at the roots, we keep down or lessen evaporation from the 

 foliage until the plants become used to their new position. 

 Plants in general would have been benefited by such foliage- 

 sprinkling in these dry hot nights, where the amomit of dew 

 deposited would not have soiled a satin sHpper in the early 

 morn ; but that sprinkling is a very different thing from 

 thorough watering, and then letting well alone until your 

 services are again required. 



Among the iminitiated few things are less understood than 

 watering, and the dribbling system is that winch generally 

 obtains. Let us take a Fuchsia plant in a pot as an illustra- 

 tion. We find the leaves and blooms uumistakeably drooping, 

 and, as the readiest way for avert ng disaster, we throw water 

 with a fine syringe over the leaves and branches — a very good 

 thing, it must be allowed, but then the remedy is a vei-j- tem- 

 porary one. Finding this to be the ease, we give a little water 

 — enough to penetrate an inch or two below the surface — and 

 that does a little more good. Keep on with this chibbUng, and 

 you might as well, or rather better, have grown your plant in a 

 shallow saucer. The lower roots wiU die, in time, from having 

 no moisture to feed on. Placing such a plant in a bucket, to 

 be thoroughly soaked, would be the best means for insuring its 

 safety, and then water it thoroughly when you do water. We 

 are supposing the plant to be standing on a shelf or stage ; but 

 if you plunge the pot in a bed, or in the earth, the very 

 plunging, though the plant be in a jiot, makes it more inde- 

 pendent of your care. The top-sprinkling, the surface-di-izzling, 

 would be ineffectual as to lasting effects as before, and would 

 so far just deprive the roots of the moisture that would reach 

 them from the bed or the earth ; but then the roots, in self- 

 defence, if permitted, would endeavour to look after themselves, 

 by getting through the pot, and down into the earth, after the 

 moisture. In such a ih-y summer as this the fields of Wlieat 

 often look extremely flourishing. 'Whence do the roots obtain 

 their moisture ? From great depths, for the surface is like 

 di-iven dust. A mere di-izzHng on the surface would do more 

 harm than good, as it would do no good to the roots, because it 

 would not reach them, and. until evaporated, the raising of 

 moisture from beneath would be arrested. On the same prin- 

 ciple, plants thoroughly established, and with deep roots, will 

 often do better without mulching than with it. Until we saw 

 through these matters, one fact often surprised us. In a dry 

 summer we have noticed how refreshed the fields looked after 

 the foliage was even slightly washed with a passing shower ; 

 but if that happened in the morning, and the day proved sunny 

 and windy afterwards, then, in the afternoon, the plants would 

 hang their heads and look more distressed than before. The 

 rain had done nothing for the roots, and the supply of moist 

 vapour, by capillary attraction from beneath, was temporarily 

 cut oft'. The balance was restored as the sm-face became dry. 

 The shower, on the whole, did good, by cleaning, refreshing, 

 and swelling out the stems and foliage ; but it could not do 

 what a soaking rain would do, that reached the roots. Let us 



