146 PRACTICAL FLORICULTURE. 



out in the open ground here the first week in May; this 

 can be done in this latitude with perfect safety, provided 

 the plants have been well hardened, as when thus hard- 

 ened, even if the thermometer falls to the freezing point, 

 which it sometimes does with us in the first week in 

 May, they will not be injured. We generally plant them 

 in beds, eighteen inches apart each way, so that they can 

 be easily worked by the wheel hoe, and also to give them 

 room enough to develop the shoots from which the cut- 

 tings are to be taken in the fall. I find it best to take off 

 the cuttings at different times, two or three weeks apart, 

 to guard against accident. While the Geranium roots 

 freely at certain seasons, when the conditions are all 

 right, yet I have seen a batch of 10,000 cuttings nearly 

 all fail. They were put in in September, when the 

 plants were growing vigorously, and the shoots full of 

 sap. The time to put in the cuttings should be chosen 

 after a spell of dry weather, such as would harden 

 and to some extent ripen the growth. Cuttings in this 

 condition, put in in the usual way the first week in Octo- 

 ber, will root freely in ten or twelve days, although cut- 

 tings taken from the plant the first week in November 

 will be still safer. There is an advantage in having 

 them early, however, as each plant can be doubled or 

 quadrupled by taking the tops from the plants as they 

 grow. Geraniums are sold usually in four and five inch 

 pots ; it is a great saving in weight to use as small a pot 

 as it is possible in which to flower the plants, but 

 such plants as Geraniums must have plenty of food, else 

 they will not develop flowers freely. A good plan, when 

 the pofe is full of roots, and it is wished to dispense with 

 a further shift into a larger pot, is to "top dress" the 

 pot with a compost of six parts soil, six parts rotted 

 manure and one part bone; "top dressing" is the re- 

 moval of an inch or so of the exhausted soil from the top 

 of the pot and replacing with this mixture. We use this 



