318 General Notices. 



The new Method of potting Plants, or One-Shift System, promises to be the 

 greatest step ever made in the progress of pot culture. A previous advance 

 was made forty or more years ago, when the frequent-shift system was adopted 

 instead of annual shifting or repotting. Previously, plants in pots were seldom 

 shifted or repotted oftener than once a year, except in the case of balsams 

 and a few other tender annuals, which received two or three shifts. Subse- 

 quently these shifts became much more frequent, so that when a balsam or a 

 cockscomb was required to be grown to a great size, it was first planted in a 

 pot of an inch or two in diameter, in rich finely sifted soil, and gradually 

 shifted, as soon as the roots reached the sides of the pots, from one pot to 

 another a little larger, till at last, when nearly full grown, it was in a pot of a 

 foot or more in width. A similar practice was general with all plants what- 

 ever, even including heaths, that it was wished to bring forward rapidly. The 

 results of this mode of culture have in general been highly satisfactory, and the 

 chief objection that can be brought against the system is, the time and labour 

 required. A second objection is, that water does not escape so freely, and 

 consequently air does not follow it so readily, as when plants are growing in 

 the free soil. This last objection is completely got over by the one-shift 

 system, the essence of which consists in the employment of rough, turfy, 

 lumps of soil along with fragments of stone, wood, charcoal, or other matters 

 which keep the soil thoroughly open, placed, of coui'se, over abundant 

 drainage. 



The one-shift system is said to have been first "struck out" by Mr. Wood, 

 late foreman in the nursery of Messrs. Backhouse of York, and for the last two 

 years foreman in the nursery of Messrs. Henderson of Pine-Apple Place. 

 The dawn of Mr. Wood's invention may, perhaps, be found in Mr. Knight's 

 chopped green turf {Physiological Papers, p. 243.), and Mr. M'Nab's "wide- 

 meshed riddle" and large pots or tubs {Cape Heaths, p. 20. and 23.); and, from 

 the Letters on Bicton Gardens in this Magazine, and the Suburban Horticulturist, 

 p. 616. and 706., it appears that Mr. Barnes has been in the habit of using 

 rough, rooty, unsifted soil in potting for upwards of twenty years. The fol- 

 lowing account of the invention by Mr. Wood is from an excellent article in 

 Paxton's Magazine of Botany for March, 1842. " It appears to have occurred 

 to him [Mr. Wood] that, as plants flourished with such amazing vigour when 

 planted out in a bed, and, if judiciously exposed and drained, flowered also in 

 the greatest profusion, it would be a most desirable object to give them the 

 same means of attaining an early and luxuriant maturity in pots ; seeing that, 

 in many places, there is no convenience for having appropriate borders or beds 

 in plant-houses, and, where there is, the specimens cannot be so easily con- 

 trolled, nor are they at all portable. Numerous experiments, both casually 

 and designedly made, had shown that, by the common way of potting, no such 

 ends coLild be brought about ; since plants which were placed in pots very 

 considerably larger than those which they seemed to require almost invariably 

 suffered, to a greater or less degree, from the stagnation of water in the soil. 

 And, as this accumulation evidently formed the chief obstacle to the adoption 

 of large pots for the smallest plants, it was very justly thought that any thing 

 which could be employed to drain effectually the entire mass of earth, so that 

 no water could stagnate therein, would give the means of allowing young 

 |)lants in pots all the benefits which they would derive from being planted in 

 beds. Following out this notion in a practical manner, small specimens were 

 shifted from what are called 60-sized pots to those which were 9 in. or 1 ft. in 

 diameter; using a turfy fibrous soil, divested of none of its rougher matters, 

 and mixing with it a quantity of broken sandstone, in pieces from a quarter 

 to half an inch square. By the united aid of the turfy and vegetable matters 

 in the soil, and the fragments of stone scattered throughout its substance, it 

 was thus kept porous and open, without even a tendency to become hardened, 

 consolidated, saturated, or sour ; and the plants throve in it with the rapidity 

 and health of those which were placed in a border, while, being situated nearer 



