Culture of the Orange and Lemon. 273 



I have been induced to commit to paper such hints as I con- 

 sider may prove beneficial to your readers, (and your readers, 

 I have pleasure in observing, are not a few,) from seeing in your 

 September Number (p. 26.) a short communication on this sub- 

 ject, entitled, " An Account of a rapid and successful Mode 

 of grafting the Orange, by Mr. James Reeve, Gardener to 

 G. F. Evans, Esq., and Lady Carberry, Laxton Hall, North- 

 amptonshire," on which I have no wish whatever to animad- 

 vert further than to say that, although his mode, compared 

 with the mode of our ancestors of no very remote date, is a 

 rapid one, yet it is not so rapid as that which I have myself put 

 in practice, with the greatest success, for the last three or four 

 years. 



As an amateur gardener, and one that has long had the 

 greatest admiration for this beautiful and useful tribe of plants, 

 I may, perhaps, have had more leisure, and greater opportu- 

 nities, of making observations on their habits ; of visiting the 

 choicest collections now in this country ; and of learning from 

 the able gardeners of the establishments where these plants 

 are best looked after, the treatment of them ; as such, Sir, I 

 feel that I am not doing any injustice to Mr. Reeve in making 

 the above observation on his communication, or in going fur- 

 ther into the detail of their culture and propagation than he 

 has thought fit to do. 



As far as Mr. James Reeve has gone, I can myself vouch 

 for the success he has derived. That lemon stocks are pre- 

 ferable to orange stocks, no one who has seen plants raised 

 from one and the other can for a moment doubt ; but lemon 

 stocks may, and will, in one year be fit to receive grafts. 

 Lemon seeds sown in January, and placed on the shelf of a 

 green-house, with the assistance of a little forcing in a cucum- 

 ber frame when two or thi'ee inches above the ground, and 

 two shiftings into small pots in the course of the year, will 

 afford excellent stocks for the January following. My system 

 is to make a common hot-bed of dung, over which a cucum- 

 ber frame is placed early in that month, into which are plunged 

 my stocks of one }^ear's growth; in about a fortnight's time 

 the sap will have run well, when I prepare my scions, much 

 in the same manner as Mr. Reeve describes, and engraft 

 either by whip, cleft, or crown grafting, as my fancy, or the 

 diameter of my scions, may lead me. I then plunge them in 

 the same hot-bed, and even in the same places they stood in 

 before engrafting. In a fortnight or three weeks the grafts 

 v/ill have taken ; and a little discretion, as to taking off' the 

 clay, bass, &c. &c, will only be required to secure the plants 



Vol. III. — No, 11. t 



