54 ON THE CULTURE OF THE INTERMEDIATE STOCK. 



[The shrubs our correspondent refers to required the treatment 

 applied, and after the plan had been properly pursued it would have 

 been surprising if they had not flourished as stated. But this ope- 

 ration does not at all affect the opinion of our former correspondent 

 as given in our January Number. — Conductor.] 



ARTICLE V. 



ON THE CULTURE OF THE INTERMEDIATE STOCK, 



BY A KENTISH MAN. 



Having been a reader of the Cabinet for some time, and not seeing 

 much said about the culture of Stocks, I take the liberty to send for 

 insertion in the Cabinet the following mode of treatment which I grow 

 mine with, and I never fail to have an extraordinary fine bloom. 



In the first week of July, I sow my seed in a bed of rich light 

 earth in a situation screened from the mid-day sun, where I allow 

 them to grow until the begining of September, when I put them into 

 sixty-sized pots separately ; the soil that I use is a light sandy loam. 

 In these pots they stand until the middle of October, when I re- 

 pot them into forty-eight sized pots in the same kind of soil as before ; 

 I then place them in a cool frame or pit, where they stand all the 

 winter. I take care to give all the air possible, in order to keep the 

 plants dwarf, and I uniformly dress the plants from all dead leaves, 

 as this is a very essential thing in winter, and I never give more 

 water than is really necessary to keep the plants alive, for if kept too 

 wet they are very likely to damp off. About the middle of March 

 they begin to show their blooming spikes. As soon as I can discern 

 the single ones from the double, I separate them, and plant the 

 single for seed in the kitchen- garden, so that I do not have any 

 single ones in my beds or flower borders. Those plants I require 

 for specimens, I re-pot into twenty-fours and place them in the 

 frame, again shading them from the mid-day sun, giving plenty of 

 air and water, as they like to be kept moist at this season. I let them 

 stand in the frame until April, when I plant my bed with those 

 grown in forty-eights, about a foot apart, and in May I have my beds 

 in one sheet of most vigorous scarlet bloom, and which at that early 

 season very greatly adds to the beauty of the lawn ; and those, too, 

 growing in twenty-fours, are then in such complete profusion of 

 bloom as amply to repay for the trouble of extra potting. 



