October 12, 1871. ] 



JOUENAL OP HOBTICULTUKB AND COTTAGE GAKDENEE. 



273 







WEEKLY 



CALENDAR, 















Day 



of 



Month 



Day 



of 



Week. 



OCTOBER 12—18, 1871. 



Average Teinpera- 

 toi-e near London. 



Rain in 

 43 years. 



Sun 

 Biaes. 



Sun 

 Sets. 



Moon 

 Rises. 



Moon 

 Sets. 



Moon's 

 Age. 



Clock 

 after 

 Sun. 



Day 



of 



Year. 



12 

 13 

 14 

 16 

 16 

 17 

 18 



Th 



F 



S 



Sos 



M 



Tc 



W 



West Carberry Horticultural Show. 

 Length of night 18h. 11m. 



19 Sunday aftbr Trinity. 

 TwiUght ends 6.69 p m. 



Royal Jersey Horticultural Show. 



Day. 



59.2 



60.7 



699 



59.0 



59.0 



58.8 



60.4 



Nisht. 

 41.4 

 41.8 

 40.5 

 40.5 

 40.1 

 40.7 

 40.7 



Mean. 

 50.3 

 51.2 

 50.2 

 49.8 

 49.5 

 49.8 

 60.6 



Days. 

 23 

 22 

 20 

 21 

 18 

 19 

 21 



m. h. 

 20af6 

 22 6 



24 6 



25 6 



27 6 



28 6 

 30 6 



m. h. 

 13af6 

 11 6 

 8 6 

 6 6 

 4 6 

 2 S 

 5 



m. h. 

 35af 3 

 62 4 

 15 6 

 37 7 

 8 9 

 27 10 

 49 11 



m. h. 



4af 5 

 23 6 

 42 6 



1 6 

 27 6 

 68 6 

 40 7 



Days. 

 28 

 29 

 9 



1 



2 



S 



4 



m. a. 

 13 24 

 IS 39 



13 63 



14 6 

 14 19 

 14 81 

 14 43 



285 

 286 

 287 

 288 

 289 

 290 

 291 



From observations taken near London during forty-three years, the average day temperature of the week is 59.6°, and its night tem- 

 perature 40.8°. The greatest heat was 80', on the iith, 1361; and the lowest cold ii", on the 15th, 1800. The greatest laU of rain was 

 1.04 inch. 



BEDDING PLANTS IN 1S71.— No. 1. 



AVING been asked by several of my garden- 

 ing friends to send a record of my experience 

 with bedding plants this season, and espe- 

 cially with Geraniums, I send a few notes 

 which I think may be of general interest to 

 yonr readers. 



I have had on trial this year about a 

 hundred varieties of the flowering section 

 of bedding Geraniums, and, including 

 Bronzes, Tricolors, and Variegated varieties, 

 nearly 150 kinds. This includes the older and well-esta- 

 blished sorts, about which it is not necessary to make many 

 observations. 



I preface the remarks by what many, I am afraid, will 

 think an oft-told tale — the method of treatment I adopt 

 during the winter and spring months, as I attribute my 

 success in a great measure, especially with many of the 

 more dwarf and tender sorts, to the treatment they receive 

 preparatory to planting-out. The great bulk of my plants 

 were talien off as cuttings at tlie time of lifting the plants 

 from the garden at the end of October. A few of those 

 binds I was short of were struck previously, so as to be 

 able to take a second batch of cuttings after potting-oft', 

 but nine out of ten were not taken ofl' till after the middle 

 of October ; they were then put, six into a 4-inch pot, on 

 stages in a span-roofed house, with a row of hot-water 

 pipes immediately under them. The pipes kept up a cir- 

 culation of warm dry air among the pots. The cuttings 

 were carefully watered, never allowing the cutting pot to 

 be too dry nor too wet, and by the 1 st of January they 

 were all struck, and ready to be potted- off, the tops having 

 all been previously pinched while growing in the cutting 

 pots. 



We began potting-oif in the last week of December, and 

 had all the young plants put into 4-inch pots ; we finished 

 potting by the end of the first week of January. They 

 were all kept on shelves and stages as near the lights as 

 possible in double-span houses, kept by means of hot water 

 at an average temperature of from 45° to 50°, with a fall at 

 night to about 38" — occasionally, in one of the houses, on 

 very cold nights, to a lower temperature ; but my object 

 is to keep them constantly growing, never to allow them 

 to be checked by want of water, nor too much cold and 

 damp. With plenty of light the growth is never long and 

 spindly, and as they are all on stages and shelves where 

 they are easily reached, any strong shoot is pinched so 

 as to make it branch. 



By the middle of April nearly all the plants are in 

 bloom, and are not stopped any more, but are then put out 

 under low frames with moveable panes of glass, the frames 

 being supported on bricks with ventilation left between 

 them. The frames are those I have previously described 

 in the pages of this Journal, and are about 3 feet wide and 

 10 feet long, double-span, 12 inches high in the centre and 

 Si at the sides, and made to hold loose pieces of 21-oz. 

 glass 20 by 16 inches, the lower part of the pane being 

 fastened by a moveable wire pin. These panes can be 

 No. 660.— Vol, XXL, Haw Bssae, 



moved about by two men with all the glass in them, and 

 can be put up on loose bricks or on fixed brick walls in 

 less than an hour. Such frames do not give the trouble 

 or entail the breakages of glass which your correspondent 

 " Au BEvoiK " complains of in your last week's number. 



I began to bed-out on the loth of May, and though we 

 three times had the thermometer below freezing point 

 in the last week in May and- the first week of June, I could 

 not see that any of the plants suffered from it. My expe- 

 rience leads me to conclude that plants suffer more from 

 hot sun and cold winds than from frost, and that the best 

 method of hardening-off plants is to inui'e them to direct 

 sun and plenty of ventilation, and this I endeavour to do 

 by never allowing any of my Geraniums to be shaded. 

 There is anjmmense difference in the texture of the leaf 

 between plants grown in. light double-span houses close to 

 the glass and those out of ordinary greenhouses, and I 

 remember being much struck when, this spring, at bedding- 

 out time, being short of two or three plants of Dr. Hogg 

 to fill up a bed, we took some out of a greenhouse next 

 to my house. All the leaves flagged, and the plants looked 

 quite difl'erent to the others in the bed for more than a 

 fortnight, and yet the greenhouse is a very light one, with 

 glass down to the ground on three sides of it, but as it 

 has a western aspect the plants were not inured to direct, 

 sun. 



I have been thus particular in describing the treatment 

 I adopt, as it may account for many Geraniums doing well 

 with me which do not succeed elsewhere. 



My soil is a good garden loam, but I always manure 

 even for Geraniums, as I much dislike the system of 

 starving plants into bloom, and by selecting sorts that 

 bloom freely under good treatment you can insure your 

 garden looking gay both in dry and wet seasons. Another 

 thing I would mention, I never use broken pots or any 

 hard materials as drainage, but riddled cinders from one- 

 half to three-quarter-inch deep at the bottom of each 4-inch 

 pot, and the plants, consequently, never have their roots 

 disturbed at planting-out time, as the roots completely 

 encu-cle the drainage, and the balls turn out of the pots 

 whole. These cinders I find nearly as good as charcoal,, 

 and a barrowload of them is quickly prepared by riddling 

 the ashes out of the house through a half -inch riddle tO' 

 get rid of the fine dust, and then riddling again through a 

 three-quarter-inch riddle, which leaves the larger and 

 coarser pieces fit for the heating fires. 



A great many of my plants are in good bloom when I 

 put them out, and I do not find these plants in less bloom 

 at the end of September than those turned out of cutting 

 pots and store-boxes, and which do not begin to make 

 a respectable show till the end of July. One good plant 

 well treated is, in my opinion, worth six badly treated, and 

 I will guarantee to make a better display with a thousand 

 good plants in sufficient variety that have been properly 

 prepared than six thousand wintered close together in 

 Ijoxes, and turned out in spring about the same size as 

 when taken off the plants in autumn. I have seen a great 

 many mistakes made by the use of quantity instead of 

 quality. I do not, of course, mean to say that all gardeners 

 No. 1202.— Vol, XL VI., OiD Sebibs. 



