November 30, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



471 



sunshine; they are impatient of stagnant moisture, but thrive 

 well in a light free soil, a mixture of sandy loam, peat and leaf 

 soil best meeting their requirements. The place intended for 

 their reception Bhould be well broken up to a depth of 18 inches 

 or more, and the compost be well incorporated with the Boil. 

 They should be planted firmly, and being tall-growing plants 

 they require staking to prevent th9m being broken with the 

 wind. When once established they will last many years. They 

 are increased by seed sown in the spring, and division when 

 growth has commenced. 



Asclepias syriaoa appears to have been imported in 1629, bat 

 has not found much favour amongst us. In its native home 

 it is said to be very odoriferous, charming the traveller when 

 passing through the woods at eventide ; it is also said that it 

 is eaten as a vegetable by the inhabitants. The pods afford 

 cotton, which the natives oollect to fill their beds with. Par- 

 kinson says, on account of the silkiness of this cotton it bears 

 the name of Virginian silk. Asclepias tuberosa is the most 

 frequently met with in cultivation, but it is by no means a 

 common plant. There are other kinds enumerated, and which 

 are worthy of being added to collections of " old and rare " 

 plants. — Veritas. 



POTTING. 



[As a " Young Gardener " doubts the necessity of being so 

 particular about placing drainage in flower pots and of the 

 little details of potting frequently recommended, let hiin and 

 other young gardeners read the following, and " little details " 

 will not then, we trust, be considered too trivial for adoption. 

 —Eds.] 



Oe all the numerous operations which com9 within the range 

 of the gardener's art, that of potting and shifting tender plants 

 from one pot into another must be regarded as one of the most 

 important. A volame coald be written on it without exhaust- 

 ing its details or exaggerating its importance in its relation to 

 the numerous varieties of plants and fruits now cultivated in 

 pots. If in anything in gardening " practice combined with 

 intelligence," -be not necessary, certainly it is not in potting. 

 By potting we do not merely mean the meohanioal operation 

 of surrounding the roots of a plant in a pot with soil. A mere 

 machine might possibly be invented to do that. It might 

 even, perhaps, be taught to a Saturday Reviewer ! 



Not only does every family and genus of plants require 

 different treatment in this respect, but each species and variety 

 requires to be studied, and the potting adjusted to its pecu- 

 liarities of constitution and growth. The intelligent obser- 

 vation and sound reasoning of the cultivator mast be carefully 

 exercised in the performance of this important operation, or 

 high cultivation need not be looked for a3 a rale. And very 

 much as has the progress of horticulture depended on the ob- 

 servation or notice-taking of practical men, we question if 

 from any "other source improved practice in cultivation has 

 resulted so much as it has from the observations and de- 

 ductions of practitioners at the potting-bench. However the 

 fact can be accounted for, it has come within our knowledge 

 that men who could discourse eloquently on the science of hor- 

 ticulture, and profess to teach the sound principles of all its 

 branches, make a mo3t complete bangle of potting or shifting 

 a plant, and succeed chiefly in violating every principle on 

 which the health of their subjects depends. In very many 

 instances the practitioner has had no navigate his way to suo- 

 cess with next to no extraneous aid, and this forcibly applies 

 to the potting of plants. 



We have often thought it a pity that in purely botanical 

 serials, and in the very interesting botanical descriptions of 

 new plants which appear in gardening periodicals, the botanist 

 does not condescend to tell us how inuoh he knows of the soil 

 and other conditions in which plants are found thriving in 

 native homes. This is to be regretted, seeing that they have 

 opportunities of learning this which gardeners cannot have, 

 and which plant-collectors do not always attend to. The con- 

 sequence is, that the " right way " has to be found out by the 

 experiments and observations of practical men ; and is it sur- 

 prising that at first they miss the way ? It is more surprising 

 that they should be sometimes sneered at for the first failure 

 or two. 



In most instances pots are a necessary evil. This being the 

 case, it is of a paramount importance to mitigate the evil as 

 much as possible. By way of throwing out a few hiats calcu* 

 lated to be useful to beginners at the potting-bench — among 

 whom we would include our scientific friends who may try 



their amateur hands at this operation, by way of relaxation 

 parhaps — we would remark that the first thing to be considered 

 in potting a plant to be placed in a glass house is that in nearly 

 every respect it is being placed under circumstances that are 

 thoroughly artificial. The space for its roots is unnaturally 

 restricted, and contains, comparatively speaking, but a few 

 handfuls of soil, which, along with the roots, is exposed to 

 the drying influence of air, not only on the surface, but at 

 the bottom and sides of the ball as well. This exposes the 

 plant to be constantly and rapidly robbed of the moisture 

 necessary to its existence, and much of the food supplied to it 

 within the compass of its pot. This unnatural loss has as 

 constantly to be made good by large supplies of water arti- 

 ficially supplied to soil in the very artificial position of being 

 in a pot. This state of things has a constant tendency to call 

 into play a host of other evils which have to be carefully ob- 

 viated in the choice of materials for, and in the operation of, 

 potting. It being necessary to administer copious supplies of 

 water almost daily, and sometimes oftener than onoe a-day, 

 the two most prominent and destructive conditions incident to 

 such a necessity are those of stagnant water and the rapid de- 

 composition of the organic substances in the potting material. 

 To some extent these evils are dependant on each other, and 

 are nearly always in existence at the same time. 



Perhaps the draining or crocking of pots may at this era of 

 horticulture be considered too common or too trifling a subject 

 to dilate on with profit to readers. Good cultivators do not 

 regard any point trifling, and we are content to submit our 

 verdict to the most successful growers when we say that the 

 draining lies at the foundation of successful pot-plant culture, 

 and that it is one which, if not properly performed and adjusted 

 to the nature of individual plants, will thwart the most careful 

 and correct attention to all other points of culture. Not only 

 so, but we are convinced that the carelessness and unbusiness- 

 like way in which it is performed in very many instances 

 warrants that its importance should be made very prominent ; 

 and in a long and extensive practice we are now more con- 

 vinced than ever that more ill-health and disease and death 

 are caused by inefficient drainage of pots than by any other 

 cause, or perhaps all causes put together. Is it not, therefore, 

 strange, as Mr. Speed of Chatsworth once put it in these 

 columns, that the crooking of pots is very often intrusted to 

 the boy or woman of the establishment ? It is an operation 

 which we have long ago ceased to delegate to such hands 

 except in the case of the most common plants that have to be 

 in pots but for a very Bhort time. We should much rather 

 see the foreman of the establishment doing this work than the 

 boy when plants bf any importance are concerned. This much 

 by way of impressing the importance of the drainage of pots 

 on the minds of the careless and inexperienced. 



It is not only nor so much on the quantity of crocks put into 

 a pot, as on their proper adjustment, that sucoess in carrying 

 off all suparflaous water from the soil in a pot depends. A 

 pot half full of crocks may not be so well drained as another 

 may be with only an inch. In all well-ordered gardens where 

 pot plants are grown there should be three or four different 

 sizes of crocks, sizes that may be termed for ordinary purposes, 

 inch, half-inch, and quarter-inch crocks, which, in breaking up 

 a mass of crock9, can be easily assorted by using sieves of dif- 

 ferent sizes. These should bo clean as the pots themselves, 

 and all dust should b9 separated from them. Speaking gene- 

 rally the largest of them should form thrae-fourths of the drain- 

 age of large pots, and the other fourth, consisting of the second 

 siz9, should bs blinded with the smaller, and over all a little 

 dry moss, or a portion of the most fibry of the soil, should be 

 placed. In a moist stove where plants have to bs heavily 

 syringed, or in the case of delicate hardwooded plants, a 14 or 

 16-inch pot should never have less than 3 or 4 inches of drain- 

 age thus arranged ; while in the case of special and shallow- 

 rooting plants it should be double this amount, or even more, 

 just as the tendency of the plant is found to be surface-rooting. 

 An 11-iach or an 8-inch pot will be sufficiently drained with a 

 lesser depth of crocks in proportion to its siza; 2 inches and 

 1J being ganerally suffiaient, but always arranged with the 

 same scrupulous care. This rale applies with augmented force 

 to all plants that are plunged, such as Pines, and to plants of 

 delicate constitution, whether they be soft or hardwooded. 

 The concave side of the crock or pieca of brokan pot should be 

 placed undermost iu placing it over the holes in the bottom of 

 th9 pots, for, if placed the other way, it too often fits too 

 closely to th9 pots to admit of the ready passage of the super- 

 fluous water. Thus arranged, the soil used in potting does not 



