392 



THE GARB ENER S J CHR NICL E. 



[June 15, 1912 



EDITORIAL NOTICE. 



NkDVERTISEMENTS should be sent to the PUB- 

 LISHER, 4it Wellington Street, Covent Garden, 

 W.C* 



Letters for Publication, as well as specimens of plants 

 for naming, should be addressed to the EDITORS, 

 41, Wellington Street, Covent Garden, London. 



Communications shoutd be written on onic side only of 

 the paper, sent as early in the week as possible and duly 

 signed by the writer. 1/ desired, the signature will not be 

 printed, but kept as a guarantee 0/ good faith, 



Special Netice to Correspondents. — The Editors do not 

 utuiertake to pay for any contributions or illustrations, or 

 to return unused communications or illustrations, unless by 

 special arrangement. The Editors do not hold themselves 

 responsible for any opinions expressed by their correspon- 

 dents, 



-Local News.— Correspondents will greatly oblige by sendingto 

 the Editors early intelligence of local events likely to be of 

 interest to our readers, or of any matters whichit is desirable 

 to bring under the notice of horticulturists. 



Illustrations.- The Editors will be glad to receive and to select 

 photographs or drawings, suitable for reproduction, of 

 gardens, or of remarkable plants, flowers, trees, &c, % but 

 they cannot be responsible for loss or injury. . 



Boullanger's conclusions we shall have to worry in being able to lay his hand on any- 

 add flowers of sulphur to the list of arti- thing when he wants it. 



ficial fertilisers indispensable to the 

 garden. 



Though that out-of-the-way portion of 

 the garden, which the gardener calls his 



Apart from the practical aspect of the Cl rubbish yard," is intended to, and does, 

 discovery — which, we repeat, yet awaits receive all the refuse and odds-and-ends 

 full confirmation — the question arises as to cleared up from every other part of the 

 the mode of action of sulphur in enhancing premises, even to the contents of the dust- 

 soil-fertility. M. Boullanger has himself bin, the name is, to a great extent, a mis- 

 supplied the clue to the answer to the nomer — the good gardener, at any rate, 

 question. By means of a series of experi- seldom has anything in his rubbish yard 

 ments involving the use of sulphured and that cannot be turned sooner or later to 

 unsulphured soils, he was able to demon- good account. Anything that he collects 

 strate that sulphur produced its stimulat- when he is turning out old plants from the 

 ing effect on plant growth only in soil greenhouse, when disposing of a finished 



which was not heat sterilised. Wh 



bed of green-stuff, or when tidying-up 



APPOINTMENTS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



to which sulphur had been added was generally on a Saturday, is sorted out as 



sterilised by heat it gave no larger crop it is gathered together in the wheel- 



than that yielded by unsterilised, unsul- barrow, and carried then and there to its 



phured soil. The yields obtained in these appointed place in the rubbish yard. Old 



TUESDAY, JUNE 18— 



Royal Hort. Soc. Corns, meet, and Gladiolus Sh. 

 (Lecture by the Rev. Prof. Henslow on M Prof. J. S. 

 Henslow as Ecologist.") Hort. Club meet, at 6 p.m. 



WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19- 



Yorkshiie Gala (3 days). Royal Meteorological Soc. 

 meet. Nat. Hardy Plant Soc. Sh at R.H.S. Hall, 

 Westminster. 



THURSDAY, JUNE 20-Linnean Soc. meet. 



experiments were, in round numbers : 



... 15 grams. 



Not sterilised soil 

 Sulphured, not steril- 



ised soil 



• * • 



Sterilised soil 



Sulphured and steril- 

 ised soil 



Whence it is to be con 



25 grams. 

 15 grams. 



16 grams. 



Average Mean Temperature for the ensuing week 

 deduced from observations during the last Fifty Years 

 at Greenwich— 59'2°. 



Actual Temperatures: — 



London.— Wednesday % June 12 (6 p.m.) : Max. 65° ; 



Min. 55°. 

 Gardeners' Chronicle Office, 41, Wellington Street, 

 Covent Garden, London. — Thursday, June 13 

 (10 a.m.) : Bar. 298 w ; Temp. 67* ; Weather— 

 Sunshine. 



Provinces.— Wednesday, June 12: Max. €0° Ilfra- 



combe; Min. 55° Shields. 



potting soil goes in one corner, for spread- 

 ing out on the borders later on ; dead 

 sticks are stacked up in a pile for burn- 

 ing in the house as firewood when dry ; 

 leaves are put in a pile by themselves to 

 rot down for potting soil ; weeds and 

 Cabbage stumps, or anything that cannot 

 be rotted in a reasonable time, or that 

 is apt to cause injury if put back on 



beneficent effect of the sulphur is due to . 



its action on some of the living constituents to the land without^ passing through the 



of the soil, possibly on certain races of soil 

 bacteria. The experiments, especially 

 when considered in conjunction with those 

 of other observers, open up a promising 

 field for further investigation. 



SALES FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



THURSDAY— 



Compact Freehold Nursery, Stamford Street, Grantham, 

 5 Glasshouses, Buildings, and Jacre Land, at The Guild- 

 hall, Grantham, at 4, by Protheroe & Morris. 



A good gardener, like a good 

 Rubbish coo k 5 i s one who manages to 



Bonfires find a use for the smallest 



odds and ends and never 



fire, is taken to the bonfire to be burned. 

 Even broken crockery or old pots and 

 pans are not thrown away. Some 

 of the former come in handy when 

 cracks are wanted for potting, and the 

 rest can be mada to serve a purpose when 

 there are paths to be re-made, or when 

 a wet corner in the garden has to be 

 drained. Old tins and pots, though no 

 longer useful in the house, may prove 

 indispensable when there are such things 



wastes anything. And just as one can ? • . . . ,. 



/ ii i ii- j 4.u 1 ,i L of u D1 . as blight mixture to be made up in a dis- 



tell by looking round the larder whether 



t> ,. A 1 . the cook is a good and economical or a 



Boullanger, reported m the bad and wasteful servant , so , by looking 



Experiments made by M. E. 



Sulphur 



Fertiliser. Comptes Rendu of the French 



Academy of Science and sum- 



used vessel — even the most dilapidated 

 and useless articles of this description can 



marised fully in Die Gartenwelt (xvi., 17, t - trusted and consc i e ntious ser- 



ud-u duu vv^tciui wivaui, •%,, -j - o be broken u or flattened out to form a 



round the garden, can one tell how T tar ^ -^o- ™ 



, i r -i j - u-„ „«; foundation to paths that need raising or 



the gardener fails or succeeds in his posi- ,. ^ 





p. 228), tend to show that the application 

 of small quantities of flowers of sulphur to 



vant. A gardener's character can be told 

 pretty conclusively by one or two very 



the soil results in a very considerable in- gim 1 testg# Go into the gree nhouse and 



urease in the crop grown on that soil. As 

 a result of the addition of flowers of 



knock two or three plants out of their 

 pots. If they stick so that the ball of 



re-making. 



It is, however, when we come to the bon- 

 fire that we discover whether our gar- 

 dener is a true economist or not. Cer- 

 tainly there are a good many gardeners 

 who are wasteful to the last degree in this 



sulphur at the rate of 7 decigrams to goil b rea ks when force is used, you know department of their business, and al- 



30 kilograms of soil, M. Boullanger claims t ^ at ^ e j g a care l eS s or slovenly man, who though it may be a proper sense of tidiness 



that the plants experimented with— Beet, doeg not take t he trouble to wash his pots that prompts them to burn practically 



Beans, Celery, Potatos, Spinach and others each time he Uses t hem afresh ; but if the everything in the way of rubbish that can 



gave a higher yield of produce than the plant com es out with a gentle tap, leaving be reduced to ashes, their zeal in this 



control plants grown in unsulphured soil. the i ns ide of the pot smooth and clean, direction is very easily carried too far. It 



Nor is that all: according to M. 



Boullanger's experiments the yield from scientious^ worker. 



to be a con- is not often, perhaps, that a gardener is 



so blind to his own interests and to the 



the soil treated with sulphur, but other- ~~B u t it is in the rubbish heap and the requirements of the garden under his 



wise unmanured, was actually greater than b on fi re that the character of the gardener charge as to burn the leaves that he sweeps 



that from soil which received a complete is to be most truly read, and it is here up in the autumn, although one has seen 



manure. When both complete manure and _^ n w h at one may call the out-of-sight, even that done by a lazy man to save the 



sulphur were added the best results of all ut-of-mind part of the garden— that the trouble of carting them to their proper 





ivere obtained. One example will suffice 



conscientious 



place in the rubbish yard. 



to show the extent to which sulphuring the fc s doings as in those other parts of the Still, there are many things burned in 



soil increased its fertility. The numbers domain which are more directly under the the bonfire that would be of far more 



to be given represent the results (in grams) 

 in the case of Celery : 



No 

 manure 



360 



Sulphur 

 only. 



635 



Complete ^Xe and 

 manure. su i phll r. 



398 



676 



eye. Such a man takes almost as much 

 pride in the neatness and precise arrange- 

 ment of his rubbish yard as in the well- 

 ordered appearance of his potting-shed or 

 his tool-house. " A place for everything, 

 and everything in its place " is his motto, 



The increase of yield in the case of the soil and ev< 



treated with sulphur is indeed remarkable, and in acting up to that commendable 



and if further experiment confirms M. principle he saves himself much time and 



value if allowed to decay instead of being 

 burned— that process, of course, destroy- 

 ing many substances which are valuable 

 to plant life, substances which, under 

 processes of decay, would be avail- 

 able for putting back into the soil. 

 The good gardener finds very little 

 indeed for his bonfire— even weeds 



