1 88 BRIEF KEMAKKS. 



the same course may be adopted with one or two exceptions. First, 

 as the presence of sun at that period is not so much to be depended on 

 as in tlie autumn, the cuttings should be placed pretty near the glass, 

 and shadiug in bright weather resorted to when necessarj^ as otherwise 

 in long continued dull weather the cuttings would become weak and 

 spindled. And, secondly, as tiie cuttings had been slightly forced 

 before their removal from their mother plant, a little mild bottom-heat, 

 of from 60" to 80'', would be of great service to them, giving them a 

 top temperature of from 50' to 60'. These, as we have already hinted, 

 are the circumstances under which the finest plants are most easily 

 produced. — Cottage Gardener. E- Fish. 



Pegging-down Bedding Plants. — This trailing growth of the 

 Verbenas brings me to the first stage of summer dressing the beds. 

 All plants which trail on the ground, or grow sideways, like Verbenas, 

 must b(! trained or tied down, to fill the more open spaces, so as to get 

 the soil in the beds covered as soon as possible. This training in our 

 forthcoming dictionary will be called "/>e^i/?«y," because, in former 

 days, the training was etiected with little hooked or forked pegs; but 

 there are many ways of " pegging " without the use of pegs at all ; and 

 one of the simplest with Verbenas is to take hold of a flower truss in 

 bud, make a hole with a stick, or with the two fore-fingers, and poke 

 the truss down in it. The shoot is then held in the right position at 

 once, and witliout knowing how the thing was done, no one could make 

 out tliat the shoot did not naturally grow in that position from the first. 

 Unless the surface of the bed is very loose indeed there are many 

 plants, such as Petunias, trailing Geraniums, and the like, which may 

 be trained after the same fashion, being kept in the right direction by 

 means of a leaf here and a leaf there buried in the soil. The foot- 

 stalk of the leaf, like the flower-stalk of the Verbenas, being still 

 attached to the plant, it holds down a shoot just like one holding a pig 

 by one ear. This may be called the simplest, or cottage mode, of 

 training. The next higlier in the scale, is a plan of training invented 

 some years since by one of our fashionable gardeners, and cotisists of 

 doubling thin strips of matting, of four or five inch lengths, round the 

 shoot, and then burying both ends of the matting in the soil. In large 

 places, or where large quantities of training matting is required, tiie 

 ends of the new mats bought in the autumn are reserved in little 

 bundles for tliis purpose, when the mats are being tied, and boys split 

 the strings into tiie smallest threads, or shreds, on wet days ; so that a 

 trainer, with no more matting than he can hold in one hand, can fasten 

 down some thousand shoots. Another way is, to have bundles of short 

 sticks, say of six-inch lengths, and as small as can be got, and stick 

 them down slantways against tlie shoots and branches of many plants. 

 Two such sticks so placed opposite each other, will have the parts 

 above ground crossing one another, like the letter X, and form'a very 

 strong holdfast. The verj' tops of the fuchsia shoots might be put by 

 for this purpose, as I suppose that no cottage gardener is so extrava- 

 gant as to burn or cast away his annual crop of fuchsia stalks, for they 

 are the handiest things possible for staking many things ; and all the 

 dressing they require is to cut them into the required lengths and 



