CHAPTER XXX 



HOW PLANTS ARE INCREASED 



The amateur should raise plants from seed when possible, to 

 ensure vigorous plants. 



THERE are many and various ways of increasing plants, 

 and it behoves the home gardener, with an eye to keeping 

 the garden full of young and healthy specimens, to 

 know something of most of them. An especial interest 

 seems always to attach to home-grown plants plants 

 that one has raised, while it is, of course, much cheaper 

 to increase the stock of a plant already in possession 

 than to buy others ! 



The two commonest methods of increasing plants are 

 by sowing seeds and by taking cuttings, and the former 

 is more generally practised. Growing plants from seeds 

 is the most natural way of perpetuating them, and 

 usually ensures a healthy, long-lived stock. By con- 

 tinually taking cuttings of one especial variety, in time 

 this develops a weakened constitution ; this is doubt- 

 less one of the chief reasons why certain favourite varieties 

 of flowers eventually disappear from cultivation. It is 

 especially the case when this method of increase is carried 

 to excess ; often a new flowering plant is over-propagated ; 



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