August 15, 1878. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
125 
The plants must then be shaken out of the pots, most or all of 
the old soil being removed, and the fibrous roots, which will 
be “dead or dying,” be cut off with a sharp knife, the plants 
being potted in smaller pots than before, placed in a frame, 
watered, kept close for a week, and slightly shaded if need be, 
and new roots will speedily be emitted, and the plants will 
commence growing vigorously, and will more than make up 
for the little lost time incurred by the slight check attendant 
on the cutting-down and disrooting process. 
A short time ago a correspondent questioned the soundness 
of what he termed the desiccating and disrooting practice ; he 
had tried the system and lost many plants. No doubt the 
practice of drying the growths of Pelargoniums can be carried 
to extremes, and the work of cutting down and repotting can 
be wrongly conducted; and it is certain that there is some- 
thing wrong in the treatment and manipulation given if many 
of the plants die under the operation. On a moderate calcu- 
lation the writer has assisted in cutting down and potting 
quite a hundred plants a year for the past thirty years, and 
certainly not one per cent. of the plants so treated has failed 
to flourish satisfactorily, notwithstanding that the disrooting 
was done in a very thorough manner. 
There is a difference between maturing the growths of Pelar- 
goniums and desiccating the plants. If a plant immediately 
it has ceased flowering is placed outdoors in the full sun, and 
water is suddenly and entirely withheld, and the foliage is 
permitted to be burnt up and shrivelled in a week, while at 
the same time the flower trusses are allowed to remain and 
seed form, as it will do under such circumstances, the growth 
of that plant is indeed desiccated but not matured, and we 
have no right to expect it to prosper. But if, on the other 
hand, the flower trusses are removed as the flowers fade, 
insects are kept from infesting the foliage, water is intelligently 
given in graduated supplies so as to sustain the foliage fresh 
for a reasonable time, yet to permit its gradual change to its 
early advancing autumn rest, the stems will store up abundant 
nutriment for the nurture of the forthcoming new growths 
until such time that fresh roots are formed to appropriate the 
fresh food supply given in potting to carry on the plant to 
maturity. 
Now to disrooting. That has also been questioned. Disroot- 
ing as recommended under the above circumstances is an ab- 
solute gain to the plants—first, because the new roots issuing 
are far more vigorous than the old fibres; and secondly, be- 
cause the restricting of the roots in bulk affords space for stor- 
ing a much greater amount of food for the plant than would 
otherwise be the case unless pots of unwieldy size were em- 
ployed, and in which the plants, while they might grow freely, 
would not grow compactly nor flower profusely. Thus ripen- 
ing of the wood of the plants, cutting them down and greatly 
disrooting them, are necessities of culture, but those operations 
must be intelligently performed. The cutting-down and 
potting must not be done simultaneously, for the old roots are | 
necessary to give a start to the new growth, and then new 
roots are equally necessary to sustain it. 
All plants of Show Pelargoniums that have been cut down 
and haye made some fresh growth should be disrooted freely ; 
and be repotted in clean well-drained pots. It is often well 
to wash the roots clean, and while wet to dash them with silver 
sand when the plants are being potted ; new roots are then 
emitted from the old speedily, and the plants grow freely and 
healthily—A NORTHERN GARDENER. 
ODONTOGLOSSUM LINDENT. 
Iy your notice of the exhibits at the Royal Horticultural 
Society’s meeting on the 6th inst. you allude to Odontoglossum 
Lindeni being exhibited by Mr. Buchanan, your reporter haying 
incorrectly copied my name. 
As tomy gardener belongs the credit of having first flowered 
this plant in England, I wil’, for the information of your 
readers who may haye a similar plant in their collections, state 
it was purchased by me about six years ago at Messrs. Stevens’, 
and was kept in a temperature the same as Cattleyas and 
Vandas for about four years. Finding it did not flower, I had 
it placed two years ago with the Oncidiums and Odontoglos- 
sums and subjected to a very low temperature, my house not 
exceeding 55° all last winter, and since the early part of May 
no fire heat whatever has been used. I think this proves 
O. Lindeni to be a specially cool Orchid, and I make no doubt 
if similarly treated other plants might annually throw flower 
spikes. Its flowers are of a cinnamon colour, and they will 
j remain more than two months in perfection.—H. J. BUCHAN, 
Wilton House, Southampton. 
AN AMATEUR’S VINERY. 
MR. WITHERSPOON’S, CHESTER-LE-STREET. 
WHEN an accomplished Grape-grower like Mr. Johnston of 
Glamis Castle states that a vinery is ‘*‘ worth going a thousand 
miles to see,” that is suflicient testimony of its being worthy 
of notice in these pages. It was in company with Mr. Johnston, 
and Mr. Hunter of Lambton that I had the privilege of in- 
specting Mr. Witherspoon’s Grapes at Chester-le-Street when, 
the above verdict was given. Mr. Hunter is, of course, equally 
impressed with the excellency of the Grapes, but for a reason. 
sufficiently obvious he is not in a position to express himself 
so freely as his confréve. It is in a great degree Mr, Hunter’s 
success as a grower of Grapes that encouraged Mr. Wither- 
spoon to commence their culture, and now that the Chester-le- 
Street amateur has succeeded so well he does not hesitate to 
acknowledge the value of the advice given by his Lambton 
friend, and not advice only, but substantial assistance. 
Mr. Witherspoon is in the strict sense of the word an 
amateur. Throughout a long period of life as a practical 
builder he has devoted his spare hours to the pursuit of gar- 
dening, to which he was attached from boyhood, and now he 
is in a position, achieved by industry and frugality, to have a 
garden of his own, and to spend his whole time in developing 
its resources. He has taken up the special culture of flower 
after flower, ending with Roses and Gladioluses ; and with the 
last-named flower has won high honours, not at local shows 
only, but at some of the chief exhibitions in England and Ive- 
land. Fruit culture has, however, supplanted the flowers, few 
of which remain except Roses, and Roses and Vines now give 
a title to his home, which is designated the “ Red Rose 
Vineries.”’ 
Chester-le-Street is a long straggling village, venerable in 
appearance, and haying a bold ruggedness, which renders it 
in some degree picturesque. The houses were built, or most of 
them, before Boards of Works were invented, and no arbitrary 
rules as to frontages interfered with the growth of a gable end 
where it happened to spring up a few feet higher than its 
neighbour or several yards out of line; indeed, lines, levels, 
and laws of uniformity appear to have been systematically 
ignored in the architecture of this quaint place, for quaint it 
appears when viewed from the railway station above it, for 
the houses are clustered in a yalley, along the bottom of which 
an open stream threads its tortuous course. At the opposite 
end of the village, about a mile from the station, we find a 
place of more modern aspect—the Red Rose Vineries. 
The district is one of meadows and pasture lands, the fields 
being almost wholly devoted to the growing of fodder for the 
great numbers of horses which live and labour in the coal seams 
below the surface. The soil, which has this year produced 
wonderful hay crops, is a brownish loam, rather heavy but not 
clayey, and generally rests on a substratum of sand—at least 
that 1s its character in the field purchased by Mr. Witherspoon 
for the growing of Grapes, Peaches, &c., under glass, and hardy 
fruits in the open air. The position is also sheltered, being in 
a valley, and the atmosphere appears clear, there being no out- 
lets in the immediate locality from the mines below. Thus 
both soil and position are peculiarly favourable for Grape cul- 
ture, and another important local advantage bearing directly 
on the subject is that coals are cheap. 
In the trenching of the ground for hardy fruit trees and 
vegetables the top spit of the pasture was reserved for the 
Vine borders. Of this fertile twfy loam the borders consist 
without any admixture except a few stones and lime rubbish 
in one house, and resting on sand perhaps no artificial 
drainage was required. The only other necessary was water, 
which Mr. Witherspcon, like Mr. Hunter, uses in large quan- 
tities, not to the foliage, but to the roots of the Vines. The 
water employed is rain water, which is conveyed from the 
surrounding hills and stored in a large cemented open cistern 
at a point in the garden sufticiently. high to afford the requisite 
pressure for drenching the borders, and if need be the Vines 
too, through metal pipes and hose. The system of water- 
storing is precisely the same as that adoptec by Mr. Cannell 
in his nursery at Swanley. Another matter reminding of 
Swanley is that Cannell’s boiler is employed as the heating 
medium for the vineries. 
Two houses are devoted to Grape culture, but only one de- 
mands special notice—the large lean-to house, 150 feet long 
