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JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
{ July 4, 1878. 
berries from splitting, which I understand are the two supposed 
dangers that are said to occur when the Vines are watered 
with the fruit hanging ripe—A KITCHEN GARDENER. 
WINDOW GARDENING AND WINDOW PLANTS. 
Ty writing for window gardeners it is meet to commence 
with 
Winpbows.—They must either open outward, inward—be 
fixed on pulleys to move upward—or constantly closed. As 
to the last—flowers or no flowers, it is to be hoped that a 
window incapable of admitting pure air may soon be as diffi- 
cult to find as the Dodo. If it is convenient to have your 
flowers always inside, as where there is no suitable window 
sill outside, then let your sashes be hinged on the outside 
and move outwards only, as it will save you all the trouble of 
moving your flower baskets, vases, or pots when you wish to 
admit fresh air. Such windows are sometimes made with a 
second hinge and turn in on the side walls, as in Spanish bow 
windows: but when this is objectionable for appearance or 
otherwise the sashes turn inwards, and you have not to disturb 
your hardy plants and boxes outside. For your own conve- 
nience and the health of your plants the most desirable sashes 
are those that move perpendicularly on pulleys up or down. 
With such you can regulate the amount of air you think desir- 
able, if any, and if you are of opinion top air is alone desirable 
Jower the top sash. 
AIR-GIVING.—With sash windows, which are never so close 
that some air cannot have access, especially in summer 
when the timber contracts and when air is most desirable, 
there is not the same risk your plants will become drawn or 
shanky, as one sees in the windows of the poor cottiers whose 
sashes enjoy a perpetual repose. You see a few leaves and a 
consumptive-looking flower at the top of a long stalk, perhaps 
standing in a saucer of water that some female member of the 
family ever and anon keeps strictly replenished. The soil is 
sodden, as it should not, and the plant is sickly. No bright 
colour glows from either flower or leaf, no more than from the 
cheeks of the pale girl inmates; and the atmosphere, which 
should constantly change, never does except when a fire is 
lighted and a current produced up the chimney, which is often 
insufficient to move the carbonated, carbureted, or miasma- 
laden atmosphere, these gases being heavier than common air. 
Such a plant has been mismanaged in the potting, as shall 
be shown, but the absence of pure air shortly terminates its 
untoward existence. In one word, if your plants cannot have 
pure air, especially during the late spring, summer, and autumn 
months, you will never have clean, healthy, bushy plants to 
reward your efforts or encourage your attention, and you will 
find yourself engaged in a labour of love vainly. When a 
cold wind blows, from October, say, to March, and of late 
years much later, your sashes must be thrown open with care, 
and then only a few inches on the top; and not at all if the 
wind happens to be a dry nor’-easter, which dries and crisps 
most injuriously any soft herbaceous plant exposed to its 
withering influence. 
WINDOW STRUCTURES.—Plain Red Pots.—These placed on 
a balcony or a window sill, and intended to successfully grow 
flowers or plants in, would require an immense amount of time 
and trouble—as much experience in watering, planting, and 
protecting as would suffice similarly to manage a greenhouse, 
if not more; and I hardly remember a single instance under 
such circumstances where complete success was achieved. In 
winter nothing grows in pots outside, on window sills, &c., 
except bulbs and yery hardy plants; and in summer and 
vutumn the young rootlets at the side of the pot are roasted 
and the plant irretrievably ruined. Plain red earthenware 
pots, even though they are scrubbed and kept clean (if covered 
with ereen slime or moss they are odious), are most undesirable 
plant receptacles alone, and are liable to the following and 
many other objections :— : ! 
a They require constant watering, especially in summer ; 
if not, the plant dies—except, perhaps, Sedums. 
} If placed in saucers of water, as one frequently observes, 
the soil, especially in the absence of sufficient drainage, 
becomes sodden, and the plant shortly terminates an 
unpleasant lingering existence. 
e In plant structures appearances are much consulted, and 
the appearance of scrubby red pots on a window ledge 
with roasted or sickly plants is not prepossessing or 
enticing. 
2. Windon Boaes— -The dimensions of the box must be 
made to suit the window ; and its depth to what you propose 
to grow and how. Many things, as showy scarlet Geraniums, 
dwarf Nasturtiums, hardy Fuchsias, Pelargoniums, and almost 
all hardy annuals, including Mignonette, &c., cam be grown 
outside in a plain deal box, lined with zinc or not, and per- 
forated for drainage purposes ; the soil suitable and the plants 
dwarf. But the perfection of such an arrangement would be 
an ornamental or plain box painted and stencilled in front, 
protected by a sheet of glass, hermetically sealed with putty, 
&c., to protect the stencil and the colouring, and for effect. 
Instead of having the box full of soil I should use damp moss, 
and only put flowers coming into bloom into it. Such a box 
would be always gay; and with a proper shade, which is 
almost indispensable to exclude heavy cold rains, hot sun, and 
hoar frost or hail, while it could be removed to admit genial 
showers and the warm night dews, one can have a perpetual 
summer or spring, especially in large towns, where, if they 
do not choose to go to the trouble of growing their own 
succession plants, they can have what they desire at almost 
every street corner, or Covent Garden Market, &c. Instead 
of the moss with which I propose to retain moisture around 
the pots and save the trouble or danger of watering, perhaps 
with hard water too, one can use good loam or leaf mould ; 
and between your pots you can grow creepers, as Clematis, 
Canary Creepers, Ipomceas, Convyolvulus, &c. 
Ineed not point out the advantage of taking up a flower 
pot and plant when its beauty has gone and putting another 
exactly in its place, without having to wait a day for succession 
blooming, without any inconvenience from change of soil or 
manure, or having to tax your patience in watching the future 
companion of your hours of ease and enjoyment. To do this 
with real satisfaction we should grow our own plants, and for 
this purpose a backyard, a frame, and a knowledge of culture 
and propagation, to which we shall immediately come, would 
be necessary. No lady or gentleman will feel their honour or 
prestige in the least diminished by tucking up their sleeves, 
and perhaps donning an apron or blouse specially made for 
the purpose, to set seeds, plant cuttings brought home from 
visiting, transplanting, watering, repotting, syringing, and 
plucking off dead flowers, with the hundred and one little 
attentions always to be noticed by a diligent and intelligent 
eye. This is pleasurable amusement, I do not call it work or 
labour. 
3, Wardian Cases—In connection with window structures 
these observations would be incomplete without noticing the 
various designs, en passant, of miniature window greenhouses. 
They are to be found very common among the wealthy in 
London squares and in front of Dublin drawing-rooms, but 
still much more so on the Continent—Paris, Brussels, &c. They 
are a combination of the greenhouse idea with the box plan 
already sketched out, and from the following description of 
M. Victor Pagnet would induce the lover of floriculture to see 
their use and beauty generally recognised and extended :—‘“ In 
Brussels the balconies are turned into greenhouses and minia- 
ture stoves gay with the brightest and greenest foliage, and in 
Paris there are many contrivances in use by means of which 
the rarest and most beautiful plants are produced. Passifloras 
cling to columns in the upper floors, water plants start into 
blossom in tiny basins curiously contrived in solid brickwork, 
and limpid water flows down a miniature rockery, from whose 
crevices start up Ferns and Lycopodiums.”’ Such contrivances 
are not common in England or Ireland, though they can be 
had. As these suggestions are mainly intended for those with 
limited means I shall merely say as the main intention should 
be to maintain a moist atmosphere, and as glass is compara- 
tively cheap, and the other requisites for such easily procured, 
any person with plans, that can be had for nothing, and with 
a distinct iaea of what is required, can make one to suit his 
own fancy and to grow Ferns, miniature plants, &c. 
PROPAGATION.—This I have already referred to, and shall 
summarise my remarks under two heads—raising plants from 
seed and from cuttings. 
Seed may be started in pans made shallow, in boxes, in 
pots, &c., covered half the diameter of an individual seed as a 
rule, something more or less as you require rapid or slow 
growth, but never too deep. The pans or pots should have 
coarse material underneath, and finer over that, ancl in most 
cases should be covered or dusted with sifted soil, or better with 
silver sand. If seeds are started early—speaking generally, 
if the temperature is under 50°, as in the early spring and 
winter months—a moist frame with 6 or 12 inches at least of 
stable manure would be necessary, unless they can be started 
