THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 177 



price would lead one to expect. There the purchaser must take his 

 share of blame. The trade cannot get up new roses on their own 

 roots at the price which competition fixes, and the hunger for cheap 

 things causes amateurs to prefer plants at three to five shillings each, 

 one-third of which are scarcely worth having, rather than pay a 

 shilling or so more and have plants fit for any purpose, with the 

 vigour of their own life in them. With old roses the only excuse for 

 working them on Manettis in a forcing temperature is to produce 

 them wholesale at a cheap rate ; and without opening again the 

 question long since settled, we have only to say on this subject that 

 when roses are advertised it should be stated what their roots consist 

 of, and before people order them they should inquire what roots are 

 obtainable, and as a rule give the preference, and an extra price, for 

 roses on their own bottoms. 



Stocky plants in 60 or 54 size pots are to be had all the year 

 round, and this is as good a season as any in the year to plant them 

 out for beds of dwarfs, whether on their own roots or Manettis. If 

 they have been pushed during the early months of the year, the 

 ground is now warm enough for them to take to it at once, without 

 any long process of hardening ; and the conditions essential to success 

 are to obtain plants that have filled their pots with roots, or that (if 

 worked) are healed at the junction, to plant them in well-manured 

 soil, eighteen inches or two feet apart, according as they are moderate 

 or robust growers, and to give them plenty of water during dry 

 weather all the season. 



You remember well the disastrous season of 1860, when it rained, 

 rained, rained, as if the world had been doomed to suffer another 

 deluge for its sins. The first bloom of roses that year was magnifi- 

 cent. The rain just suited them ; it is evident that the frequent 

 recommendation to give roses plenty of water, especially overhead, is 

 no figment of the imagination. Now the work of the season among 

 roses consists first in giving them abundance of water. The drier and 

 hotter the weather, the more are they infested with fly. The more 

 rain, or the more artificial rain from hydropult or engine, the less will 

 they be troubled with this horrible pest, and if sent through the heads 

 of standards with some force, every aphis will be hurled to limbo, 

 and the bloom buds will plump up by absorption, and give richer and 

 larger blooms. We have advised hand-picking for the grub, and 

 never was it more needed than this season. Now the enemy that 

 awaits them is the fly, and though water is not poison to it, plenty 

 of water and plenty of aphis rarely go together ; one must give way ; 

 and it is the rose-grower's business to see that the fly is kept down 

 by a process which enhances the beauty of both foliage and flowers. 



The blooms are opening well and early this season, and we fully 

 expect that the rose shows which are fixed for the earliest dates will 

 have better contributions than those that come later. When the 

 first bloom is nearly over, prune in slightly, and mulch with either 

 rotten dung or wood-ashes and guano, a bushel of the first to a peck 

 of the last, and a peck of the mixture to be spread in a circle of three 

 feet in diameter round the stem of each tree; half the quantity will 

 suffice to .spread around dwarfs : but half-rotted dung is best where 

 June. 12 



