1844.1 



THEGARDENERS' CHRONICLE. 



^T^E^^^^ =^X»:.^«0" be amply suffice to 



705 



t\ J R. GLENDINNING, since his residence near the 



_L*-i- Metropolis, has had the honour to be consulted by a 

 number of Noblemen and Gentlemen in the improvement of 

 their Parks and Gardens, and in the construction and heating 

 of Horticultural Buildings in the most economical as well as 

 effectual manner. He has now made such airangements as 

 will enable him to devote his particular attention to these 

 important subjects ; and Noblemen and Gentlemen desirous of 

 consulting him, are respectfully requested to address him at 

 ■Chiswick Nursery, near London. 



WANTED, 500 YEWS, 6 inches high ; 250 BUCK- 



▼ > THORNS, 1 foot high; 50 Small DECIDUOUS CYPRESS 

 Prices to be sent to Mr. Matthews, 5, Upper Wellington- street 

 Covcnt Garden, London. ' 



^fie €?. 



Cfjrottfcle 



SATURDAY, NOVEMBER S0 9 1844. 



MEETINGS FOR THE TWO FOLLOWING WEEKS. 



JUonday, i Dec. 2. Entomological : fiPM 



Tuesday, Dec, 3 J Horticultural . < , \ 2 ; ' 



I Linnean .... 



AVednksday Dec. 4 Societr of Arts . 

 FjUDAT, , Dec. G Botanical . 



Wednesday Dec. 11 Microscopical .... 

 Saturday, Dec. 14 Royal Botanic . 



8 P.M. 



8 p.m. 



8 P.M. 



8 p.m. 



4 P.M. 



We proceed to redeem our promise of offering 

 remarks upon the experiments made by our cor- 

 respondents with Potatoes during the past season; 

 and we commence with one of singular interest and 

 importance by Mr; Grey, of Dilston, the full parti- 

 culars of which will be found in another column. 



It is well known that whatever care may be 

 bestowed in taking up a Potato crop in the autumn, 

 some tubers will remain in the ground ; and it has 

 been observed that the plants from such tubers are 

 extremely vigorous when they make their appear- 

 ance in the succeeding spring. Potato-growers are 

 also aware of the existence of a prolific variety called 

 the Onion Potato, which is always allowed to 

 remain in the ground during winter. These, or 

 some such facts, have led to the suspicion that it 

 would be better to set Potatoes in the autumn 

 than in the spring, and that this sort of plant is 

 hardier than is generally supposed. 

 : Mr. Grey, of Dilston, in the experiment now pub- 

 lished, has put this question to the test ; and, con- 

 sidering the care and skill with which the trial was 

 made, we must regard it as conclusive under exactly 

 the same circumstances. It will be seen that 

 autumn-planted crops gave a return of 1 1 1 loads per 

 acre, while the spring-planted produced but 86 loads, 

 although, with the exception of the season of plant- 

 ing, all other circumstances were equal. 



The circumstances under which so enormous a 

 difference was obtained, without the expenditure of 

 one shilling more in the cost, are deserving most 

 careful investigation. It appears that the main 

 features in Mr. Grey's operation were— 1. That the 

 Potatoes were replanted as soon as they were taken 

 up; 2. That a moderate quantity of but slightly- 

 fermented dung was employed; and, 3. That the 

 sets were well covered in by deep ploughing. Of 

 these the two last are, we imagine, the most im- 

 portant; and they are probably indispensable to 

 success. 



Whether or not the Potato is reset as soon as taken 

 up, or at a later period in the autumn, is perhaps un- 

 important ; and therefore we should be inclined to 

 attach little weight to the supposed difficulty of 

 getting land ready so early as to take an autumn 

 crop of Potatoes directly after harvest. . If they can- 

 not be planted, like Mr. Grey's, by the 20th Octo- 

 ber, they might, we conceive, be in the ground 

 without risk a month or five weeks later, in well- 

 drained land, without any difference in the result. 

 Our reason for entertaining this opinion is, that the 

 Potato undergoes no change during the autumn or 

 winter— it is only when the spring returns that mis- 

 chief is done to the Potato seed by sprouting and 

 heating ; and it can hardly make a difference in the 

 result whether the Potatoes to be planted are buried 

 Ml drills in the soil of a field, or in heaps of earth in 

 any other place. We would, therefore, advise the 

 experiment to be tried even now, if the weather 

 remains mild enough, by those who have land in 

 proper order, provided it is light and thoroughly 

 "rained. It would, however, be better now to plant 

 *nole Potatoes rather than sets. 



I he two last precautions adopted by Mr. Grey 

 inay be considered together. Potatoes cannot bear 

 irost : the objection to autumn planting is the sup- 

 posed difficulty of preserving them from it with 

 certainty. By a slight addition of loose dung, and 

 ourymg them to a sufficient depth, Mr. Grey 

 was able to keep off the frost of 1843-4; and 

 neretore he succeeded. But it remains to be detcr- 

 cipm • whetber the same precautions will be suffi- 

 the l in another wi nter. We do not know what was 

 ne lowest degree of temperature near Newcastle 

 *ast winter, but we find that near London the ther- 

 mometer never sunk lower than 14°, and that frost 



u «i not nenptrato »»»« «w> l *i ,i .v— r» or o 



guard the Potatoes. But would the'y be equally 

 effectual in harder winters? 



The difficulty of answering this question* with 

 confidence arises out of the insufficiency of our infor- 

 mation concerning the temperature of the soil. 

 Observations on the temperature of the air are end- 

 less ; on that of the earth very few. Indeed, we 

 cannot lay our hands upon any in which confidence 

 can be placed, except those of .Mr. Ferguson, of 

 Kaith, and sucli as have been recorded in the Garden 

 of the Horticultural Society. It appears from the 

 former observations, that at one foot below the sur- 

 face the thermometer stood as follows :— 1 8 16, Jan. 

 33', Feb., 33°. 7, Dec, 35°.7; 1917, Jan., 35°.6 

 Feb., 37°, Dec, 35°.9. (See « Theory of Horticulture," 

 p. 95). It is therefore to be inferred that a covering 

 of soil to the depth of a foot would have proved 

 sufficient in all these months. Moreover, loose soil 

 conducts heat worse than hard soil, and the loss of 

 heat would be still further diminished by long litter 

 used with it, so that Mr. Grey's method would pro- 

 bably afford ample protection in such seasons as that 

 of 181(3 and 1817. We should, indeed, be inclined to 

 think that it would afford protection in any English 

 winter; for at a foot below the surface, in solid 

 ground, experience shows that the temperature in 

 winter is about a degree or a degree and a half above 

 the mean temperature of the atmosphere. It is true 

 that, according to the testimony of various persons, 

 a much greater degree of cold is experienced in the 

 soil. It was, for instance, stated that during the 

 hard frost of 1837-8, the ground was frozen to the 

 depth of 28 inches at Claremont,and at Liverpool to 

 the depth of IS inches ; but it is to be remarked that 

 in the former of these places the thermometer in the 

 air is said to have fallen to 14° below zero, while in 

 the latter it was not less than 9° above zero. There 

 is, however, great reason to suppose, either that there 

 was some error in those observations, or that the state 

 of the earth was modified by unexplained local causes. 

 For in the very carefully conducted experiments in 

 the Garden of the Horticultural Society, the solid 

 ground at one foot below the surface was never 

 actually frozen (although the thermometer fell to 

 W below zero), the lowest range of a thermometer 

 buried one foot below the surface having been 33° ; 

 and it was found by digging, that the frost had only 

 penetrated the loose soil of the Kitchen Garden 

 9 inches; a hard loam footpath 10 inches; the soil of 

 a mossy lawn 5 inches. 



What experience we have then, leads us inevitably 

 to the conclusion that autumn planting, with the 

 precautions taken by Mr. Grey, will not only succeed 

 in mild winters, but probably also in our hardest. 

 And this conjecture is rendered the more plausible 

 by the well known fact, that plants, even when frozen, 

 are but little injured if they thaw slowly, and in the 

 dark, which is precisely what must happen to the 

 buried Potato. We would, therefore, have Potato- 

 growers bestir themselves and attend to this matter; 

 for we presume they can have no objection to change 

 their 15s. for a guinea, which was about what hap- 

 pened in Mr. Grey's very important experiment. 



Among the smaller class of contrivances which the 

 fondness for house-gardening has called into exist- 

 ence, nothing is better in its way than Mr. Beck's 

 slate pot, made by jointing together small slabs of 

 slate into the capacity of a common garden-pot. To 

 be sure, they are at first somewhat expensive, but, 

 like many other expensive th'ngs, they are really 

 much cheaper than what costs less money; for they 

 cannot be worn out, and can scarcely be broken ; 

 besides which, they are much better suited for sitting- 

 rooms than common garden-pots, whose porous 

 material renders it difficult to keep them moist with- 

 out being wet. Some of the finest Roses and Pelar- 

 goniums that appeared at the London Shows last 

 year were grown in this kind of vessel, and every 

 one who saw them must admit that they were un- 

 surpassed. Slate pots possess, moreover, the conve- 

 nienceof being square, so that they can be easily packed 

 into any given space, and of being heavy, which 

 prevents their being easily upset. 



In short, they are a prodigious improvement upon 

 the garden-pot, both aLeganis appearance and uH S^ " ft! «R -^T^pSi'XSU'S 

 hty, and we heartily recommend them to the favour- the leading shoots grow stronger and are better able to 



ON PRUNING FOREST-TREES. 

 Without entering into the controversy between Dr. 

 Thackeray and Mr. Billington, on their different systems 

 of pruning forest-trees, I beg to give what, according to 

 my limited experience, I conceive to be the best system 

 of pruning trees which are designed for timber. 



The object aimed at is to produce the greatest quan- 

 tity of timber, of the best quality, in the shortest time. 

 If the object were simply to produce the greatest quan- 

 tity without having regard to its quality there is no 

 doubt that this would be best accomplished by judicious 

 thinning, and in other respects leaving the tre'es entirely 

 to nature. For it is generally egreed that the office of 

 the leaves of a tree is to elaborate the crude sap which 

 rises from the root, and form it into cambium, or proper 

 juices, which descend and form every year a layer of al- 

 burnum or soft wood between the bark and the wood of 

 the previous year, down to the root, which alburnum 

 hardens into timber ; and the longer the tree stands the 

 harder it becomes, from the pressure of the successive 

 annual layers. This being the case, it is easy to under- 

 stand that a tree loses an organ of nutrition in every leaf 

 that it is deprived of. But it is required that the timber 

 should be of good quality, as well as great In quantity; 

 and this treatment would not answer for that purpose ; 

 because the best timber is produced in the bole, and by 

 leaving a tree to Nature, the branches, where tbey had 

 room to grow, would increase at the expense of the bole, 

 which would then most probably become forked at a 

 short distance from the ground, the object of pruning, 

 therefore, is to obtain a tall, straight, and thick bole in as 

 short a time as possible. 



Now, if the growth of trees be carried on in accordance 

 with the principles above alluded to, and the leaves per- 

 form fie important functions attributed to them, I con- 

 ceive that in order to obtain the 

 desired end, twoobjects ought chiefly 

 to be kept in view, viz., to in- 

 crease, as much as a tree is ca- 

 pable, the amount of its foliage, 

 and to decrease, as much as pos- 

 sible, the amount of wood in the 

 side-branches. If both these ob- 

 jects could be accomplished at the 

 same time, and in the same tree, 

 the foliage having little or no wood 

 in the side-branches to support, 

 the timber in the bole would rapidly 

 increase. But since this is impos- 

 sible, as these two objects are in- 

 compatible with each other, and 

 cannot be both fully attained, the 

 best mode of pruning is that which can most nearly 

 unite the accomplishment of both these objects, and 

 make the one yield to the other in the proper pro- 

 portion. 



The following method is the best with which I am ac- 

 quainted for effecting this ; and, so far as I can judge 

 from the little experience of it that I have had, I can 

 confidently recommend it as likely to prove successful, 

 if properly followed up. 



Commence pruning when the trees are voung; and, be- 

 ginning at the top of a tree, cut off all the leaders but 

 the strongest and best ones, at the second or third bud 

 from their base ; then cut off the first side-shoots below 

 these, at the fourth or fifth bud from the main stem, the 

 next at the sixth and seventh, and so on, downwards, in 

 regular gradation to the bottom ; so that the tree may 

 assume a conical shape, each side-branch projecting a 

 little further from the main stem than the one imme- 

 diately above it. I do not mean that these directions 

 ihould in every case be followed exactly ; I merely give 

 the principle, as nearly as I can. By this mode the 

 lateral branches of the tree, instead of becoming large 

 and projecting far from the stem, with perhaps only a 

 few leaves at their extremities, will be kept of a mode- 

 rate length; and small branches bearing leaves will be 

 greatly multiplied, so that the tree will be well clothed 

 with foliage nearly from the top to the grnund, and a 

 quick upright growth will be produced. This pruning 

 should be repeated every year, or oftener, if required; 

 and it may be done at any season of the year, as the 

 branches to be cut off will always be small, and there- 

 fore small wounds will be made ; and time would be lost 

 by delay, although the best season is the early part of 

 summer, soon after the trees have completed the 

 growth of their spring-shoots. 



As the tree rises, the lower branches should be suffered 

 gradually to extend, which they will be able to do, if the 

 branches above them are not permitted to overhang their 

 extremities, and the conical shape will thus be preserved, 

 and its appearance will be somewhat like that of the 

 figure. This system of pruning is intended for deciduous 

 trees; but it may be partially applied to evergreens with 



in \ 0t p f" etrate rne ground there deeper than 2 or 3 the dark. To this we may add, that they are bette 

 es - rrom so slight an amount of cold the means looking than the Hyacinth-glasses in common use 



able consideration of the public, who will not think 

 the worse of them when they know that their 

 fabrication gives winter employment to some very 

 worthy and deserving workmen. 



To this we would add a word of commendation in 

 favour of Mr. Hunt's New Hyacinth Pot, made 

 in ornamented China, and in the form of the com- 

 mon Hyacinth-glass. It has a neat contrivance for 

 fixing the wires required to steady the flowering 

 spike and leaves of the Hyacinth, and presents the 

 advantage of keeping the young roots of this bulb in 

 the dark. To this we may add, that they are better- 



\ ▼ T 4 1 * 



bear the exposure, and the closeness of the foliage and 

 small branches assists in protecting the stem from the 

 chilling and drying influences of wind and weather. The 

 tree should receive no other kind of pruning than the 

 above, if it were not required that the timber should, as 

 far as possible, be uninjured by knots. But on this con- 

 sideration only it will be necessary, when the tree attains 

 the height of about 12 or 15 feet, to commence pruning 

 away gradually the lower branches, by cutting off one 

 tier only every year, smooth and close to the stem, leav- 

 ing no snags, but taking care not to carry this process too 

 far — not denuding the stem for more than about half the 

 height of the tree. When trees are intended for shelter 

 or a screen, the lower branches ought not, of course, to 



