290 ON THE CULTURE OF THE CHRYSANTnEislUM. 



ARTICLE II. 



ON THE CULTURE OF THE CHRYSANTHEMUM INDICUM. 



BY MR. WILLIAM CHITTY, STAMFORD HILL, NEAR LONDON. 



The cultivation of the Chrysanthemum is a subject upon which so 

 much has been written, and well written too, that it may appear 

 perfectly superfluous to add thereto, but as there are items of manage- 

 ment in every cultivator's mode of managing this plant different to 

 every other, and the kind of treatment I have adopted with them the 

 last few years enabling me to produce nice neat and bushy plants, 

 flowering in tolerable perfection, I am induced to send you the par- 

 ticulars for insertion in the Floricultural Cabinet. 



The latter end of March, or beginning of April, I select the 

 strongest suckers from the old plants, and plant one in a 48-sized pot, 

 using the richest soil, consisting of equal parts of loam, bog, well- 

 rotted stable manure, and leaf mould. When I have put off as many 

 as I have occasion for, I set them in a cold frame, and keep them 

 close for a fortnight or three weeks, by which time most of them are 

 well established in the pots. They are inured by degrees to the open 

 air, they are then taken out and placed in an open situation until the 

 pots are well filled with roots, which will be by the middle, or from 

 that to the end of May ; they are then shifted into the pots in which 

 I intend them to flower, some into 24's, and some into 16's, accord- 

 ing to the strength of the kinds, using the same kind of compost for 

 them. I then plunge the pots up to their rims in a south border, 

 about 2 feet 6 inches apart each way, which allows plenty of room 

 for the plants to grow without drawing each other, and for perform- 

 ing the operations of tying, watering, &c, which they from time to 

 time require. In this situation the pots soon become filled with 

 roots, and protruding through the bottom of the pots the plants 

 luxuriate with very great vigour. In order to keep the plants snug 

 and bushy, continual attention to stopping is necessary, commencing 

 with the plants when they are four or five inches high, and subse- 

 quently as often as they have made four or five joints till the middle 

 of July, when I leave off stopping and let them run up for bloom. 

 As soon as the flower buds are well formed, which with me is mostly 

 about the last week, or last week but one, in September, I tie up the 

 plants to neat sticks, and arrange them in the way I wish them to 



