Propagation. 161 



plants of commerce, and the means of extending our plantations. But 

 where a variety is scarce, or the purpose is to increase it rapidly, we can 

 dig out the many interlacing roots that fill the soil between the hills, cut 

 them into two-inch pieces, and each may be developed within a year into 

 a good plant. Fall is the best season for making root cuttings, and it can 

 be continued as late as the frost permits. My method is to store the roots 

 in a cellar, and cut them from time to time, after out-of-door work is over. 

 I have holes bored in the bottom of a box to insure drainage, spread over 

 it two inches of moist (not wet) earth, then an inch layer of the root cut- 

 tings, a thin layer of earth again, then cuttings until the box is full. If the 

 cellar is cool and free from frost, the cuttings may be kept there until 

 spring ; or the boxes containing them can be buried so deeply on a dry 

 knoll in a garden as to be below frost. Leaves piled above them insure 

 safety. Make sure that the boxes are buried where no water can collect 

 either on or beneath the surface. Before new roots can be made by a cut- 

 ting, a whitish excrescence appears at both its ends, called the callus, and 

 from this the rootlets start out. This essential process goes on throughout 

 the winter, and therefore the 'advantage of making cuttings in the fall. 

 Occasionally, in the fall, we may obtain a variety that we are anxious 

 to increase, in which case some of the roots may be taken off for cuttings 

 before setting out the plants. 



These little root-slips may be sown, as one would sow peas, early in 

 the spring, as soon as the ground is dry enough to work. A plot of rich, 

 moist land should be chosen, and the soil made mellow and fine, as if for 

 seed ; drills should then be opened eighteen inches apart, two inches deep 

 on heavy land, and three inches deep on light. The cuttings must now be 

 dropped three inches from each other in the little furrows, the ground 

 leveled over them and firmed, which is best done by walking on a board 

 laid on the covered drill, or else by the use of a garden roller. If the 

 entire cutting-bed were well sprinkled with fine compost, and then covered 

 so lightly from one-quarter to half an inch with a mulch of straw that 

 the shoots could come through it without hindrance, scarcely a cutting 

 would fail. Unfailing moisture, without wetness, is what a cutting 

 requires. 



Roots may be divided into half-inch bits, if forced under glass, and in 

 this way nurserymen often speedily provide themselves with large stocks 

 of very scarce varieties. The cuttings are placed in boxes of sand until 

 the callus forms, and little buds appear on the surface of the roots, for 

 which processes about five weeks are required. They are then sown in 

 shallow boxes containing about three inches of soil, formed of equal parts 

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