PLANTING AND PRUNING. 63 



allowed to produce any, they are not only not of 

 first quality, but enfeeble the plant ; whereas 

 older plants, carefully grown, will give effective 

 results the first year. Some nurserymen make a 

 practice of cutting away all the flower buds from 

 free blooming varieties, which form on the young 

 plants during the first year's growth ; this prac- 

 tice is highly to be commended ; such plants are 

 far more valuable to the purchaser than those not 

 so treated. Quality should always be preferred 

 to quantity ; this is true whether respecting the 

 plants or the flowers of roses, and one good two- 

 year plant is worth more than six of the suck- 

 lings often sent by mail — poor, weak infants, 

 which never should have been sent from the 

 nursery — just as one good bloom of Marie Bau- 

 mann, or Alfred Colomb, is worth half a dozen 

 of Pius the IX. or Triomphe de V Exposition. 



Care must be exercised that the soil about the 

 plant be well pulverized and no hard lumps 

 allowed to remain in contact with the roots ; 

 after the plants are set out, he sure that they 

 are firmly pressed in with the feet or hands; plants 

 that are loosely stuck in the ground can never do 

 well. Another prominent thing to bear in mind 



