MANURE EOR ROSES. 61 



the union of the bud or graft with the stock may be under 

 the surface of the ground. Tall roses should be pruned, 

 to prevent the wind tearing them, and they should have 

 stakes. Standards should be planted three feet apart, 

 and rose-bushes from twenty-one inches to two feet. 



Pig manure is the best animal manure for roses. Next 

 night-soil, cow manure, and horse manure; the sweepings 

 of poultry and pigeon-houses are also good. They should 

 lie in a heap long enough to be thoroughly rotten, but 

 not long enough to lose the ammonia. Pig dung should 

 be spread and forked in at once early in spring. Night- 

 soil should be mixed with sand, charcoal dust, or some 

 such dry substance, and spread and dug in in winter. A 

 surface dressing of rotted manure should be applied in 

 autumn, allowing two shovelfuls to each standard or other 

 tall tree. For summer surface dressing, wood ashes, 

 with an eighth of guano, is good, a quarter of a peck to 

 each tree, spread over a circle three feet in diameter; 

 this dressing should have abundant watering in dry 

 weather. Brewers' grains, thrown to ferment for not 

 less than three weeks, and mixed with one-fourth of 

 burnt earth, is a powerful stimulant ; give half a peck or 

 a peck to each tree in winter. The following manures 

 have also been recommended : Soot, wood ashes and 

 charcoal (especially for tea-scented and others on their 

 own roots), bone dust, and bones in half-inch bits 

 (lasting, and especially good for tea and other roses on 

 their own roots) ; guano and super-phosphate are good, 

 but they must be used with caution, or they may sacri- 

 fice bloom to rampant growth. They are best applied 

 in liquid manure, and in that form they suit light soil 

 well. Liquid manure of all kinds should be applied 

 while the trees are freely making their growth, and 

 again to perpetuals when the first bloom dies off. 

 Every rose-grower should establish a vessel for liquid 

 manure, large in proportion to the number of roses 

 under cultivation : it may be half filled with manure 

 balls from well-fed horses or sitting hens, or with any- 

 rich manure, and filled up with water again and again 

 for some time. This may be used freely with any roses 



