July 29, 1875. 1 



JOURNAL OP HORTICOLTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



85 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



Day Day 



of I of 

 Month Week. 



JULY 29-AUG. 4, 1876. 



29 

 80 

 81 

 1 

 2 

 8 

 4 



Th 



F 



S 



Sdh 



M 



Tn 



W 



Shrewsbury Show opens. 



.Southampton Show opens. 

 10 Sunday after Trinity. 

 Bank Iloliday. 

 Sedgeley Show. 



Weston-Buper-Mare Show. Royal Horticultural So- 

 [ ciety — Fruit and Floral Committees at 11 a.m. 



Moon 

 Risea. 



Moon 

 Sets. 



h. I m, h. 

 morn. 12af 6 



55 af 

 10 2 



11 



52 

 19 

 38 

 53 

 4 



Moon's 

 Age. 



O 



1 

 2 



Clock 



before 

 Sun. 



m. s. 



6 11 



6 9 



6 6 



6 8 



5 59 



6 54 

 5 49 



Day 



of 



Year. 



210 

 211 

 212 

 213 

 214 

 215 

 216 



56. 8< 



From obsen-atjons taken near London during forty-three years, the average day temperature of the week is 75.1^; and its night temperature 



HINTS ON KOSE-CULTURE. 



E are greatly indebted to those gentlemen 

 who visit oiu' large Eose shows and supply 

 us with the names of the most promisiag 

 new varieties, but there are many Eoses 

 that charm the eye when exhibited in a 

 prize-stand which prove comparatively 

 worthless when cultivated in an orchnary 

 flower garden. 



Nothiog is more fatal to the popularity 

 of a Eose than a weak constitution, and 

 yet some of the weakest growers produce flowers exqui- 

 sitely lovely ; Mdllc. Bonnaire, Marquise de Mortemart, 

 and Horace Vernct are types of this class, and when trans- 

 planted from the nursery to the garden how often is it 

 the lament of the purchaser that they become smaller by 

 degrees but not beautifully less. 



I recommend to those who are desirous of growing the 

 charming weaklings to greater perfection the following 

 plan to attain their object : — Select a plot of ground which 

 has been deeply trenched and well manured a short time 

 previously, plant it with young, clean, Manetti stocks, 

 2J feet apart each way, and on these bud the Eoses as 

 close to the root as possible, and never transplant them, 

 for they are too weak to bear it. Cut-back hard in the 

 spring in the usual way, and the result in nine cases out 

 often will, I believe, be highly satisfactory. 



Strong growers are sometimes condemned as weak by 

 those who have purchased a plant or two which does not 

 happen to thrive. The best way to arrive at a just con- 

 clusion as to the relative vigour of different sorts is to 

 ■visit a nursery where Boses are grown by the thousand, 

 and go through them row by row and take notes : whether 

 strong or otherwise can be seen at a glance. As this is 

 the month for budtling, it may be worth mentioning that 

 strong plump buds will generally produce stronger plants 

 than will weak buds. Several Roses condemned by me 

 last year have greatly improved this — notably Bessie 

 Johnson and Madame Lacharme ; both, however, spoil 

 quickly with either hot sun or rain. — H. Duddekidge, The 

 Dorset Nurseries. 



FURTHER NOTES ON PEARS. 



I READ with pleasure Mr. W. Taylor's interesting paper 

 on dessert Pears. No doubt some good practical results 

 would arise out of an election of Pears, as then the sorts 

 generally grown would be more widely understood, and 

 the sorts marked excellent or good from the greatest 

 number of places would be those that might be planted 

 with the greatest safety. 



About the time that I first began to take an interest in 

 Pears no opportuoity was allowed to slip in order to gain 

 all the information that I possibly could, either from 

 books or by tasting the fruit at different seasons where 

 good and correctly-named collections were grown; and 

 after planting most of the standard sorts the result of 

 their fruiting has been very differing from the expectation 

 raised by the information previously gained. 



Vo. 718 —Vol. XXIX., New Series. 



One of the most fickle varieties known to me is Knight's 

 Monarch ; it is described in the fruit catalogues as " hardy, 

 melting, and excellent;" and in the new edition of the 

 " Fruit Manual" it is said to be one of the most valuable 

 of Pears. I have tried it in three different ways : First on 

 the wall, where it has borne fruit for three or four seasons ; 

 each time the largest proportion of the fruit remained hard 

 until the end of the season, when it has been necessary 

 to throw it away. Secondly, as pot trees in the orchard 

 house, where the fruit grew to a much larger size, and 

 was carefully gathered at the right time, but the result 

 was exactly the same as to the ripening of the fruit. In 

 pots where they were removed out of doors, and the 

 fruit ripened as a pyramid, it is quite the same. Now, 

 it is not the soD, as the loam used for the pot trees is 

 different from the garden sod, and the climate must have 

 been very different in the orchard house from that out of 

 dooi's, and the climatal conditions of a wall facing west is 

 different both from the orchard house and from the open 

 garden where the sun and wind acted upon the trees at 

 any time. This year a large portion of the fruit dropped 

 off fi'om the wall trees before it was ripe, and I noticed 

 in the answers-to-correspondents columns that others 

 were in the same predicament, and also that their fruit 

 failed to ripen satisfactorily. If anyone has ripened this 

 Pear well during the last few years, information as to 

 how the fruit was grown and the nature of the soil would 

 be very valuable. 



I tasted fruit of it in the most splendid condition some 

 eight or nine years ago at Hallingbury House ; Mr. Spivey, 

 the gardener, could, no doubt, let us know if the fruit 

 ripens well every year with him. He has a splendid 

 collection of Pears, and could give your readers most 

 valuable aid. There is a printer's error in the " Fruit 

 Manual," the year 1850 should be 1830. 



Take another useful Pear of quite a different character 

 — Beurre Bosc. Dr. Hogg hints that the fruit is not of 

 good quality unless the tree is grown against a wall ; 

 and the principal fruit catalogues seem to hold a similar 

 opinion. We have not grown it at Loxford in such a 

 position, but there is a large standard tree in the garden 

 which annually bears large crops of fine fruit which ripens 

 in October ancl November, and is always good. It never 

 fails to ripen well, and the tree has not failed to produce 

 a crop for the last twelve years. 



I would name Marie Louise as the best and most useful 

 of all Pears ; it is excellent on walls, as a pyramid, and 

 grown as a pot tree in the orchard house. Beurru Super- 

 fin and Doyenne du Cornice are splendid Pears on a clay 

 soil, but in our light soil they cannot be recommended. 

 The fruit has been good once or twice, but it is always 

 uneven in size, and generally cracks badly; but I must 

 reserve the information about other varieties until it is 

 decided how and at what time the information is to be 

 sent. If the Editors can be advised to issue printed forms 

 to the principal fruit-growers I have no doubt they will 

 heartily respond. 



I have frequently urged the importance of summer 

 pruning upon the readers of the Journal, and am more 



No. 1400.— Von. LIV., Old Sbbies. 



