CHAPTER XVIII 



SECOND WEEK IN MAY 



THE lovely blossoms of the Malmaison carnation sare 

 now opening in the greenhouse, and their dainty 

 fragrance is filling it. These plants have been kept 

 rather dry throughout the winter, giving them an airy posi- 

 tion near the glass, and no syringing has been allowed to 

 reach their foliage at that time, for " spot " disease is easily 

 set up by too much moisture, and, being of a fungoid nature, 

 this trouble will run through and destroy a whole collection 

 of these carnations very rapidly if water be allowed to settle 

 upon their leaves and lie there. It is so highly infectious 

 that plants, if once seriously attacked, are of little use, and 

 are best thrown away or burned ; but at the outset of the 

 disease every infected leaf, with its black spots, should be 

 cut off, and the plants dusted with powdered sulphur, 

 removing them to a drier atmosphere, and giving them 

 plenty of air, for at no time do they enjoy a close atmo- 

 sphere. 



After flowering, we turn the older plants into a frame 

 without their pots, placing them rather low in the soil, and 

 surrounding them with a layer of fine spent soil, leaf- mould, 

 and a little soot, into which the new growths are pegged 

 down, after trimming off their leaves about half the length 

 from the stalk, and cutting the stems half through with a 

 sharp knife. If watered in dry weather, and kept well 

 covered with soil, these layers will form strong roots by the 

 end of September, when they should each be potted up 

 singly in a thumb-pot, shifting them on as soon as their 

 roots reach the bottom or the pot, so that by the spring 



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