December 19, 1878. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
465 
valuable that a frame with glass sashes was decided on for 
this and succeeding winters. It is a very plain erection—a 
sufficient number of sawn boards nailed on laths from the 
front, back, and ends; these are united at the corners with 
screws to allow for taking to pieces readily and storing away 
when not required. The sashes were part of the roof of a pit, 
which was reconstructed this autumn. Our stock is now, 
therefore, secure either from frost or heavy rains, which dis- 
figure the flowers. 
I find this plant does best divided every spring and re- 
planted. The end of March isa good time to do this, pulling 
the clumps into pieces of three or four strong growths. These 
are planted 6 inches apart in rows a foot asunder. The 
ground requires to be well cultivated and liberally manured. 
The work during summer consists in keeping the bed clean and 
running the hoe occasionally up the rows. Treated thus the 
spikes are much stronger and the individual blooms larger 
than when allowed to grow on undivided and uncultivated for 
years. Our bed is 15 feet by 9, and is a little forest of spikes. 
The plants have been yielding flowers since the middle of 
October, and continue producing fresh spikes to take the 
places of those cut. In a cut state the spikes continue to 
open, though the colour is not so deep as when opened out of 
doors. By cutting portions of the stalks and changing the 
water twice a week the spikes last for ten days at least.—R. P. B. 
WINTERING BEDDING PLANTS. 
HAVING received several inquiries relative to preserving 
bedding plants in unheated pits we reprint the following 
seasonable notes, as embodying the long experience of our 
accomplished old contributor the late Donald Beaton :— 
The reason of hearing so much of harm in cold pits by frost 
and damp weather is just the want of Nature’s rest for plants, 
and Nature’s rest for plants is simply cold all the world ever. 
It is difficult, however, to cause Nature to rest in bedding 
plants during a muggy moist autumn, such as the last we have 
gone through. There was no real rest till the frost came on 
shortly before Christmas, and in many of the cold pits all over 
the country plants were in a very bad condition then to go 
suddenly to rest; and those who made and may make use of 
bright sunshine in hard frosty weather to help to keep off the 
frost will be punished in the long run if the winter holds on 
hard a long time. 
Some people will lose plants from the sheer want of means 
of saying them from frost after all their good treatment ; but 
the great bulk of the loss occurs from the soft state of the 
plants just before the frost, from the damp state of the bottom 
and sides of pits and frames, and the quantity of wet soil in 
the pots. Now the effect of an hour or two’s sun on all this 
damp at this season of the year is to raise a strong degree of 
vapour, which, being confined, has the worst possible effect on 
softwooded plants. The moment the sun touches the glass of 
a cold pit in frosty weather air should be admitted, if ever so 
little, and the sun should be entirely off the glass before the 
air is shut off, no matter how cold the day may be. It is far 
better for soft plants to leave the glass wholly covered for 
days together in sunny weather during a hard frost than to 
raise that yapour inside a frame and not allow it to pass off 
instantly. With the exception of real practitioners it is difti- 
cult to make people to believe all this, for the mass of man- 
kind do not and cannot see the immediate risk or any danger 
at present, nor signs of any such misfortune as is implied in 
these strict rules. But real practice has more effect on the 
public mind than the actual preaching-up of a theory, be it 
ever so sound; therefore just hear that I practise what T 
preach about my own plants at rest. 
Ihave kept over three thousand Geraniums in one cold pit 
without any artificial heat. The pit is seventeen lights long 
in one division, the back is 9-inch brickwork, the two ends 
mounds of earth against 1-inch deal, and the whole length of 
the front is only of that material—or say, the front and ends 
of pitch-pine deal 1 inch thick; but there is a dry lining in 
front 6 inches through. The glass has a good slope, and is 
covered with four folds of mats, and as much stuff over them 
as keeps off any frost. During the slight early frost in October 
I closed this pit for two nights only, and then, expecting a run 
of mild weather, I fixed as a rule that abundance of air should 
be left on every night, and that the lights should be off, or all 
but off, the whole day if it did not rain till the glass fell to 30°. 
That rule applied down to the week before Christmas; then 
the first frost was 10° of cold, or the thermometer was down 
to 22° on the scale, and some of the leaves got stiff with the 
frost after having two mats thick over the glass, but nothing 
to hurt; and I opened the lights wide while the sun was out, 
and in the afternoon I allowed the glass to get a little frosted 
before I put on the mats, which were also frozen a little. 
The second change I had 14° of frost, the glass being down 
to 18°, and put four mats thick on. Then 12° of frost, and on 
the sixth night I put a deep covering of dry materials over the 
mats; and as long as the frost will last, even if it should be 
for six weeks, I shall not open this pit nor let the sun shine on 
the glass; but I am not yet sufficiently covered to hold out 
against a down-to-zero frost, and I shall add more to the 
covering or not according as the glass tells the fall of the 
temperature. After all that covering my glass is frosted just 
as on the first afternoon ; the mats are also stiff, and all the 
materials over them are stiflish also, and the air round my 
pits cannot be much over 30° all this time; but I have no 
glass inside to tell how it is, and I am always afraid to trust 
to common thermometers that way, instead of the eye and the 
feel of a friendly hand among the leaves. 
Now these plants are, at last, sent to rest entirely by cold, 
the most natural method of inducing entire rest. ‘The pit is 
quite dry, and the longer I can keep the plants at rest the 
better for them and the easier for me. I shall keep them in 
the dark as long as the frost continues, and shall not open the 
glass till four days of thaw have passed, and then shall not 
open the glass till the first cloudy day, when I shall admit air 
very freely. Many years back I used to keep five thousand 
plants of Geraniums every winter, and I know of no better 
method for all kinds of frame plants. There is not a shade of 
difference between my present plan and that which I practised 
twenty years since; and I am convinced that the nearer the 
plan can be imitated the safer the plants will get through a 
long winter. 
There is one other move, however, which helps me greatly— 
I never water any such plants the whole winter. They had 
not had a drop from the end of last September, and I hope it 
will reach to the end of next March ere they necd watering. 
Hundreds of thousands of little Heaths, and others just as 
tender, and not over 3 inches in length, are kept in the London 
nurseries with only one mat to keep the glass clean, the rest of 
the covering being straw or stubble. But these being in very 
small pots must haye occasional waterings, which doubles the 
expense over the plan of not watering at all; also doubles the 
risk of moulding or damping off. 
The great error and the greatest danger are in the fidgetty 
ways of amateurs, who fear their plants are done for if they 
escape being uncoyered for three consecutive days at a time. 
I think nothing of haying my pets three weeks at a stretch as 
dark as the thickest covering can keep them. But where 
everything is wet or damp inside, and the alternate chills and 
vapours which are caused by every blink of the sun being used 
to keep up the heat render the plants so excitable, and so 
liable to the least cause of injury, that the wonder is how 
many of them escape a sharp winter. 
NATIONAL ROSE SOCIETY. 
THE annual meeting of the above Society was held, according 
to announcement, by permission of the Horticultural Club at 
their rooms, Arundel Street, Strand, on Thursday the 12th inst., 
the Hon. and Rey. J. T. Boscawen in the chair, There was a 
large attendance, including many of our best rosarians, and doubt- 
less the inclement weather suggestive of no Roses but Christmas 
Roses deterred others from attending. Amongst those present 
were the Rev. Alan Cheales, Capt. Christy ; Messrs. McIntosh, 
Davies, Jowitt, Mayo, Arthur G. Soames, Evans, Graveley, Yeates, 
Strange, Hart, Robins, Twmer, George Paul, Cranston, Prince, 
Appleby, Young, Jefferies, T. Francis Rivers, Corp, kc. _ 
The Hon. Treasurer, Mr. W. Scott, made his financial state- 
ment. It appeared that there had been £446 4s. 6d. received, and 
that there had been expended in prizes £366 6s. Gd. ; in printing, 
stationery, and all working expenses £44 1s. 2d., leaving a balance 
in hand of £35 16s. 10d., there beirig, however, a debt due on 
account of the Exhibition at St. James’s Hall last year of between 
£50 and £60; and a vote of thanks was proposed to Mr. Scott 
for the able manner in which he fulfilled his duties as Treasurer 
during the past year. The minutes of the General Committee 
having been read by Mr. Mawley the Hon. Secretary, Mr. McIntosh 
was elected as a Vice-President of the Society, and the Committee 
and officers were elected for the ensuing year, the local Secretaries 
being added to the list of the General Committee. An interesting 
discussion then took place as to whether any persons who were 
not members of the Society should be allowed to exhibit, and it 
