Juno 11, 187i. 1 



JOURNAL OP HOUTICULTUBB AND COTTAGE GAKDENEE. 



'159 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



Dny Day 



of of 



Month Week. 



11 

 12 



13 S 



Th 



14 

 15 

 16 

 17 



Son 

 M 

 To 

 W 



JUNE 11—17, 1874. 



Meeting of Eoyal Society 8,30 p.m. 



2 Sunday after Trinity. [8.30 p.m. 



Meeting of Iloyal Geographical Society, 

 Meetiog of Zoolosricftl Society, 8.30 P.M. 

 Koyal Horticultural Society, Fruit, Floral, 

 [ and Creneral Meeting. 



From observations taken near London daring forty-three years, the average day temperature of the week is 72.3^ ; and its night temperatoje 

 47.5=. The greatest heat was 90", on the 12th and 13th, 1812 ; and the lowest cold 30=, on the 15th, 1830. The greatest fall of rain was 1.46 inch. 



FBUIT-GKOWING ON HEAVY SOILS. 



OW difficult it is to give directions that shall 

 be generally applicable to all gardens. The 

 longer one lives and the more practice one 

 has, the more careful is he in giving advice 

 to other people ; for on close inspection we 

 often find that the practice which answers 

 in our own particular case would not be ap- 

 plicable at all beyond a certain limited area. 

 For instance, after the seven weeks' drought 

 we have now had, and with almost everyone 

 in the neighbourhood crying out for rain, who would not 

 imagine that every plant in the garden would be suffering 

 from the lack of moisture ? Such, however, under our 

 peculiar circumstances is not the case. I have not yet had 

 occasion to water a dozen plants, excepting where the 

 roots are confined, or those newly planted. The soil here 

 is not of the kind usually selected for a garden, it being of 

 a stiff clayey nature, but in a season like the present it 

 has great advantages over a lighter soil. It is, however, 

 very expensive to work, and in a wet season it is not easy 

 to get early crops ; for in addition to the wet cold soil, 

 we have to deal with an immense host of creeping and 

 flying enemies. The worst of all, I think, are the little 

 black slugs, which appear in thousands whenever the 

 weather is warm and moist. It is a mystery wherever 

 they come from, for sometimes the walks are almost black 

 with them, and the only effectual remedy I have yet found 

 is hand-picking. But says someone who knows, " Dust 

 lime over them." Well, I have dusted hme over them, 

 and rather warm too, and the only effect it has is to 

 make them slip out of their old jackets, after which they 

 start off as fresh as ever. If I can overtake them with 

 a new dose of quickhme before their new skin gets 

 hardened it then has more effect on them, but that is 

 not always convenient, and after trying various plans 

 I have fallen back upon the very oldest one — to catch 'em 

 and kill 'em. But the birds, where are the birds '? WeU, 

 the birds, especially the blackbirds and thrushes, seem to 

 very much prefer Strawberries and GoosebeiTies when 

 they are in season, and when those fruits, or some others 

 of equal delicacy, are not in season, they go sulkily away, 

 and get their food somewhere else, and we do not see one 

 of them for days at a time ; but let us have a little more 

 fruit ripening than we can find nets to cover, we may be 

 quite sure the birds will be there before it is fairly day- 

 light, and they will not eat small fruits while they can 

 get large ones. I do not believe they ever tasted one of 

 the little black slugs I have mentioned, but I must own 

 they keep us clear of the larger kinds and house snails ; 

 therefore their lives are sacred. 



Another peculiarity of the soil here, and probably of 

 strong clayey soils in general, is that the fruit trees grown 

 in it do not require hard pruning ; they naturally grow 

 rather vigorous if they grow at all, and can scarcely be 

 induced to make small fibrous roots and short growths. 

 If they are persistently pinched and cut hard back they 

 get hidebound, cankered, and covered with moss and 

 No. 680.-VOL. XXVI., New Sebieb. 



lichen ; but let them have a certain amount of develop- 

 ment for a year or two, allow them to make shoots as 

 long as can be fairly ripened, taking care to keep them 

 sufficiently thin to admit light and air, they will after- 

 wards get to grow more moderately, and, instead of con- 

 tinually making gross shoots, will form fruit spurs on 

 the growth of former years. By following this plan I 

 have some young trees planted only three years ago as 

 good now as others planted eight years, which were, in 

 my opinion, too much restricted. I do not think it 

 possible to grow miniature fruit trees satisfactorily in 

 such a soil as this. Probably in a light poor soil the 

 miniature form may be the most profitable. 



We must adapt ourselves to circumstances ; this is one of 

 the most difficult lessons in horticulture. We see a thing 

 done i^erfectly well in one place, and, perhaps, learn per- 

 fectly well how to do it ourselves; but we try the same 

 plan in another place under different circumstances, and 

 the result is utter failure. We must learn certain things 

 for ourselves by practical experience on the spot. No 

 amount of book lore, or seeing work done in other places, 

 will give us the requisite information. It takes half a 

 hfetime's hard work of both head and hands to learn to 

 manage an extensive garden satisfactorily if there are no 

 reliable data to start with, and yet we see many pro- 

 mising young men forced out of places, and pronounced 

 incompetent with only a trial of a year or two. 



I will give another instance which I think goes far 

 to prove that fruit trees in the heavy soil here do not 

 like hard pruning. An orchard, principally Apples, was 

 planted fifteen or more years ago, the trees were kept 

 closely pruned, and produced at the time I first saw them 

 a great quantity of twiggy shoots, which were annually 

 cut back to be followed by a greater number of the same 

 sort, and little or no fruit. The stems were hidebound, 

 and covered with lichen, and did not increase in size. 

 Three years ago the shoots were merely thinned in 

 summer, leaving the principal ones their full length, or 

 nearly so, and since then they have been left to them- 

 selves. The result is that the trees are recovering rapidly, 

 the stems are swelling, the bark cracking, and the lichen 

 falling off, and instead of twiggy shoots, we have shoots 

 2 feet in length full of fruit spurs. Last year many of 

 the trees produced fruit of good quality, and I am in 

 hopes of seeing an annual improvement. — W.m. Taylor. 



STOCKS FOE SPEING AND EAELY SUMJIEK. 

 My last letter (see page 4391 was devoted principally to 

 Brompton Stocks, finishing with a glance at Lothians and 

 their preparation as pot plants. For this pm-pose few 

 plants are finer, or will win more general appreciation, 

 than these heavily-laden masses of bloom and perfume in 

 winter and spring. To obtain large plants early they 

 should, as previously stated, be sown in April or May on 

 a gentle hotbed ; yet small handy plants for pots, to flower 

 in spring, will result from seed sown at the present time 

 in rich soil, having the shelter of a bit of glass during a 

 possible heavy downpour of rain, which is too much for 



No. 1341.— Vol. LI., Old Seiueb. 



