i 
stig iti ao 
1843.] 
THE GARDENERS’ CHRONICLE. 
555 
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.— 
Fellows of the Society who are desirous of sharing in the 
Seeds just brought from Sou'h America by Mr. Hartweg, are re 
quested to apply immediately to the Secretary, 21, Regent street, 
The Gardeners’ Chronicle. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1843. 
MEETING FOR THE FOLLOWING WEEK. 
Tuesday, August15 . . . Horticultural. « + 3 PM 
Suotip Strawberry leaves be mowed off at this 
Season ?—We say, no; some of our correspondents say, 
yes. They appeal to their own practice,—we to 
general principles, which cannot be neglected with 
impunity. The opinions of the one are empirical— 
of the other theoretical. To which is the public to 
lve assent? Let us consider. 
he reasons in justification of this practice. assigned 
by the mowers, are the following, viz.: 1. That they 
get good crops; 2. That the beds are again covered 
with leaves before the winter, and are thus well 
Protected at that season; 3. That avery neat appear- 
ance is secured; and 4. That the buds for the next 
year are thereby rendered uncommonly plump. 
That good crops may be obtained by mowing is 
what we will not dispute, for on good Strawberry land 
we know that the beds will bear ill treatment to a 
great extent ; but in such cases it may be that the 
Crops are obtained in spite of the mowing and not in 
Consequence of it. A man who is lame may walk 
faster than another who is whole, but no one would 
Say that the fastness of the former is in consequence 
of his lameness, and the slowness of the other because 
of his wholeness. ‘Ibe question is not whether good 
Crops can be obtained with mowing, but whether 
better could not have been had without it. 
As to the beds being again well covered with 
leaves before winter, this is perfectly true; but what 
then? Rightly considered, this is one of the worst 
Consequences of the mowing; for if we inquire into 
the history of the formation of these new leaves, we 
Shall find that they are produced at the expense of 
Organizable matter, previously lodged in the roots of 
the Strawberry plant. That matter was lodged there 
by the leaves, which the mower destroyed, and was 
Mtended by nature for the food of the leaves and 
ruit of the succeeding year. Being expended in the 
roduection of autumn leaves, the store of food for the 
eaves of: the next spring is, by so much, diminished. 
oubtless such autumn leaves form a good pro- 
tection in winter, but it is a protection bought at a 
great price, and not better, if so good, as would have 
heen furnished by the old leaves had the mower 
allowed them to remain. 
are far from denying the neat appearance 
obtained by the mowers, and if Strawberry beds are 
made for ornament we should approve of this prac- 
tice. But the Strawberry is grown, we believe, to 
gratify the palate and not the eye. This is not a 
question about the manner of making a green edging, 
ut of obtaining a crop of fruit. Nevertheless, we 
believe, that the whole history of the practice of the 
Mowers is traceable to an inconsiderate anxiety to 
Make their Strawberry beds look pretty. 
Finally, we fully admit the fact that when Straw- 
berry beds are mowed at this season, the buds do 
become very plump and fine looking : and so much 
the worse ; for what is this plumpness, except the 
Indication of an attempt on the part of the plants to 
row up their flower-buds in the autumn, instead of 
Yeserving their strength till the spring? Surely it 
Cannot be advisable to encourage such an attempt, 
which can only have the effect of rendering the buds 
tender and excitable during the winter, when they 
Sught to be perfectly dormant. 
Let any one look at the present state of Strawberry 
beds. He will find them covered with dark green 
healthy vigorous leayes, not exhibiting a trace of 
lecay, if the beds are in good health. Those leaves 
ate now collecting the organisable matter which is 
Wanted for the crop of next year, and that matter they 
are slowly depositing in the roots. Up to the present 
time they haye not done much in this way; for at 
tst they were occupied with their own organisation, 
and then were called upon to feed the fruit. It was 
Only after the fruit was gathered that they began to 
Collect and send down into the roots, in any consider- 
able quantity, the organisable matter, or true sap, 
Wanted for another season. By mowing them off the 
Sardener stops this essential operation ; and it is physi- 
call impossible for him to do so without detriment 
to the future crop. The utmost that he can expect is to 
Tepair the mischief he has committed: but is that good 
8ardening which commits mischief for the sake of 
Tepairing it? 
© way 
Yemedied is 
in which the evil may be partially 
this. When new Strawberry leaves 
Pes they feed, as we have before said, upon the 
ie already in the roots, and thus consume a large 
att of that which was intended by nature for the 
maintenance of the fruit of next year. At first 
their action is entirely one of robbing. But if they 
grow fast enough, and the season is long enough, they 
may become organised in sufficient time to restore to 
the roots a part of that which they have stolen ; and 
in that case the mischief produced by mowing is, 
perhaps, repaired. This is the utmost that can be 
said—not in favour, but in palliation—of the bad 
system we have been considering. 
f it were right that the life of a Strawberry leaf 
should be put an end to at Midsummer, we may rely 
upon it that Providence would have ordained that it 
should perish without the assistance of a scythe. 
Tue most obvious mode of increasing the produce 
of the land is, no doubt, that of bringing waste lands 
into cultivation, and of improving the fertility of those 
which are of inferior quality; but there is another, 
which is of more general application—we mean the 
more perfect cultivation of every kind of soil, from the 
richest to the poorest. There was a time when 
an opinion was universally adopted by agriculturists, 
that in every soil, according to its natural quality, 
there was a maximum of production which could 
never be exceeded ;—that if by excessive manuring 
you attempted to force a crop, you were sure to suffer : 
the produce of straw would be increased at the expense 
of the grain, or the weight of the ear would be too 
great for the straw, and the corn would be laid before 
harvest, , 
At one time, five quarters per acre of Wheat were 
thought a maximum for the best lands, and other 
grain in proportion : yet we have known eight, and 
even ten, quarters per acre in the gardens of cottagers ; 
and we observe daily that the crops on the allotments 
let to labourers, and well managed by them, are much 
heavier than those of the farmers around, although 
the land is in general cropped harder in the allotments 
than in the farmers’ fields. No farmer would think 
of having Potatoes and Wheat alternately for several 
years. His Potatoes would curl, and his Wheat fail 
after a few alternations ;—nor would we recommend 
such a practice on the richest alluvial loams. How 
comesit, then, that the labourer does so, and his crops 
seem as good as ever? Perhaps one word will account 
for it—this is, didlage. He stirs his land oftener and 
deeper ; he incorporates the manure intimately with 
the soil. If you observe his crops growing they 
appear less luxuriant in spring; the plants are not so 
thick on the ground as they are in a field which was 
richly dunged in autumn—but pull one up carefully, 
and you will find that the fibres have struck deeper, 
and the roots are more numerous: the strength of the 
plant is gone downwards, a broader foundation is laid, 
and when the stems rise they are more numerous and 
much stronger. The deep roots are not much affected, 
by the vicissitudes in the weather; if there is a wet 
season, there is a greater depth of mellow earth to 
absorb it; should it be very dry, and the superficial 
roots lack moisture, the deeper-laid fibres will pump it 
up. We see how vegetables in a garden which are 
drooping for want of rain are invigorated and refreshed 
by merely digging or forking the ground around their 
roots; the fibres find a readier passage to the moisture 
of the earth below, and very soon transmit it to the 
stems and leaves by capillary attraction. In a deeply- 
pulverised soil, however light in its nature, plants are 
seldom burnt by the effects of drought; clays, no 
doubt, retain moisture in their solid clods, but the 
roots cannot penetrate them until they are pulverised. 
If plants are kept alive in very stiff clays they make 
no progress, unless they find a well-pulverised soil 
below. 
Tull, who was a keen observer of nature, saw 
so many proofs of this in his clay soil, that he began 
to think that dividing and pulverising the soil was all 
that the land required for producing great crops ; and 
as he could not deny that manure did some good, he 
thought it must be by dividing the clay and preventing 
its uniting in masses—and he was not entirely wrong. 
When fresh long dung is ploughed into a stiff soil, the 
undecomposed fibres of the straw interpose between 
the clods and prevent their being cemented together 
by the rains ; as they decay they leave a residue of a 
black carbonaceous matter, which is imperfect humus, 
and which forms excellent channels for the fibres to 
spread in, while the moisture which this humus retains 
strongly, independently of its own nourishing quality, 
greatly promotes the growth of the roots. Tull pro- 
duced good crops of Wheat for many years in succes- 
sion by sowing the seed in rows with wide intervals, 
keeping the plough continually working between the 
rows ; thus he had a fallow and a crop at the same 
time: and if he had known of the chemical consti- 
tution of the grain which he carried off the land, and 
had found means to restore the required elements to 
the soil, he might perhaps have realised his vision of a 
perpetual fertility. If, while he ploughed the intervals, 
he had manured them judiciously,—we will not say that 
one species of plant might have been brought to per- 
fection for ever in the same ground, but the symptoms 
of deficiency in the crop from what farmers call 
| 
| 
the land being tired of it, would probably not have 
appeared s0 soon. In fact, the cause of this defect is 
not yet well ascertained. Perhaps one great cause is 
the increase of those minute insects which are found 
to infest and live upon particular plants, and which 
increase so rapidly as at last to check the growth of 
the plant altogether: another plant, especially of a 
different natural family, does not afford them the 
nourishment and protection they require; hence this 
plant thrives, the insects gradually die off. and the 
original plant thrives again. We know that the greater 
the variety of produce raised in succession on the same 
spot, the more healthy is the growth of each; but if 
we could find out the real cause of the degeneracy of 
plants repeatedly raised in the same soil, and also a 
remedy for it, there seems no reason to doubt but the 
same crop might succeed on the same spot for ever, 
In the present state of our knowledge, experience has 
taught us, that, by pulverising thi il and exposing it 
to the influence of the atmosphere, and by varying the 
crops, restoring, in the shape of manure, those elements 
which they had extracted from the earth and assimi- 
ated to themselves, we can keep up the fertility of 
the richest soils; and by giving a little more tillage 
and manuring to those which are inferior, we gradu- 
ally improve them till they become equally productive 
with the best. The soil of very old gardens is nearly 
of the same quality, whatever may have been the 
original soil. Stiff’ clays are converted into a black 
friable mould, and so arelight sands ; so that, without 
a very minute analysis, it would be difficult to distin- 
guish them, and as to their fertility, they are quite on 
a par. The object of the farmer should be, so to crop 
and manure his land, and so to till and prepare it, that 
every year it may improve in texture and produc- 
tive power, until his porous sands become consoli- 
dated and retentive of moisture, and his heavy clays 
mellow and crumbling under the fingers. Then he 
may hope for increased crops, and reap from the 
same extent of land as much corn as he would have 
done had he added to it an equal tract of waste, and 
brought it into cultivation at a great expense.—M. 
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE WATERING 
OF OUT-DOOR PLANTS. 
As the remarks I made a fortnight since on the watering 
of out-door plants were intend efly to turn the 
attention of practical men to the subject, and embody a 
few leading facts in physics bearing on the process, I 
would here, with your permission, enter a little x e into 
detail. ‘That the cold produced by the combined influence 
of evaporation and radiation is cons able, may be tested 
by direct experiment 3 itis also obvious from many familiar 
examples, That given in the experience of the natives of 
India is quite apropos. Placed in a climate which does 
not naturally produce ice, advantage has been taken of 
the refrigerating powers of evaporation and radiation in 
order to procure it. Shallow trenches are dug on the 
higher lands, where the temperature is lowest ; the bottoms 
of these are covered over with straw, which is moistened ; 
on this straw are placed shallow earthenware vessels with 
about half’an inch of water, aod by the agency referred to, 
the whole or a portion of this water is converted inte 
ice during the night. The object of the shallow trench in 
this instance is to guard against a frequent renewal of the 
air as it is cooled down, and of the straw and porous 
vessels to increase as much as possible the evaporation. 
When the vessels used are of a dark colour, and the straw 
or other porous material of like complexion, the effect is 
greater. Another example of a similar nature here occurs 
to me, which may be worth while noticing. In many 
parts of the country, particularly in Scotland, there are 
many natural basins where marshes erewhile existed ; 
these, by the successive accumulation of vegetable debris, 
have got filled up with peat-earth, and by drainage and 
cultivation converted into arable land. On such land it 
is, however, found that the crops (green crops in par- 
ticular) suffer much from hoar-frost during the early and 
latter parts of the season ; that the Potato in particular is 
often cut down by frost, while those growing on the 
neighbouring acclivities and places more exposed remain 
unscathed, The reason of this is obvious. The dark 
porous nature of the soil favours free radiation and 
evaporation during the cloudless night, by which the 
temperature is depressed : and the shelter of the surround~ 
ing hills and woods, it may be, prevents a free circulation 
of air, by which that d i may be r 5 
the cold in consequence gets so great, that the plants 
growing there are frequently frozen to death, while others 
in’ th icinity escape. 
oe here being no aueRtion whatever about the fact of cold 
thus produced, let us inquire briefly into attendant circum- 
stances. The amount of cold is greatest when the air is 
very dry ; that is, when the dew-point is farthest removed 
from the atmospheric temperature, or, more practically, 
when the wet and dry bulbs of the thermometer indicate 
the greatest difference of heat ; 2d, When the sky is clear 
and cloudless; 3d, When the atmosphere is still; and 
4th, When the surrounding soil is dry and parched. On 
the two first it is y to insist ; on 
the third I may remark that tender plants are generally 
ut out in a sheltered situation, being so protected either 
by shrubbery or hedges, and that so placed they are thus 
the more liable to have their temperature depreciated. On 
the concluding attendant circumstance I would observe, 
that the surrounding soil and other objects being in a 
parched state, tend to imbibe moisture given off from any 
I 
