Febrnary 23, 1871. ] 



JOUENAL OP HOBTICULTtJEE AND COTTAGE GARDENEE. 



143 



the air could circulate on all sides of them, no douht enabled 

 them to withstand the destructive influence of the long dark 

 period we have just passed through. Had they been, as usual, 

 wintered in a cold frame, with only coverings to keep out the 

 _ frost, most likely I should have had to bcwad the loss of the 

 Avhole, for I find the Geraniums, in bo.xes, which are here far 

 more important than Verbenas, have kept much worse than 

 usual, owinff to the dull weather and limited heat supplied. I 

 have long- been of opinion that to keep Verbenas well they must 

 be kept growing, for it is no easy matter to start them when 

 once they become fairly stunted and diseased. 



Jly mode of managing them is usually to take off cuttings 

 from the middle to the end of August, and to strike them in 

 some shady place without heat, so as not to encourage too much 

 growth at top. I also use larger pots than most people ; the 

 size called sixteens in the trade is that which I generally adopt, 

 and the cuttings remain in the pots all winter, yielding succes- 

 sive batches of cuttings if all go on well, but I have often been 

 unfortimate and lost a great many, especially when the pots 

 have had to stand some time on the ground in a cold pit, where 

 both heat and a good circulation of air have been wanting. 

 Now, although Gazanias and, I believe, Nierembergias will cn- 

 d\iie this with impunity, and, in fact, may be covered up for 

 weeks, as some of mine have been, Verbenas will not. Warmth 

 and a free eh'culation of air arc necessary for them, and what is 

 also equally important, insects of all kinds must be kept down, and 

 however clean and healthy the plants may appear at the time 

 cuttings are taken off for propagation in early spring, we never- 

 theless immerse them in a sort of decoction of tobacco about 

 the C'dour of porter. Immersion for a c mple of minutes or 

 so will destroy any green fly that may be remaining, and does 

 the cutting no harm. A basin or other vessel of this liquid 

 always accompanies those putting in spring cuttings. The first 

 lot of cuttings was put in on February 6th ; at this season they 

 are mostly put in in boxes — at least all the kinds propagated to 

 any extent, and a four-light frameful of such cuttings, after 

 they have been in a M'eek, all look like growing, the heating 

 material being merely a mixture of dung and leaves. 



I have often been short of plants to propagate from at this 

 season, and our present ample supply is mainly owing to the 

 winter stock haviug had a more favoured position than usual 

 during the dark days. If I had only a few plants, and, wanted 

 to increase them to the greatest possible extent before planting- 

 out time, I would prepare a nice, warm, dung hotbed, with 

 suital)le soil in it, as if for Cucumbers, and after having dipped 

 the Verbena plants in the tobacco water previoiisly described, I 

 would turn them out of their pots into this bed, not disturbing 

 the ball if it could be avoided, and allowing the plants to grow 

 till they completely covered the bed before taking off any 

 cuttings; then any reasonable quantity could be had, for Ibeliev'e 

 much harm is done by cutting a plant too early, and where the 

 root has room to grow the top ought to be allowed to do so also. 

 This I fear is not ia the power of "C. J. .S." to do, but I advise 

 the bath nevertheless, a warm site if it can be bad, and if the 

 Ijlants are in small pots, a few of the best might be shifted into 

 larger ones, and growth will likely follow ; at the same time do 

 not remove all the soil from the roots, otherwise time is lost, but 

 repot the ball entire, even if there are a great number of plants 

 together, and success may yet reward the labour. 



Much has been said on the wintering of plants for the flower 

 garden, and the v.arious modes adopted for the purpose ; there 

 are, nevertheless, plants which can only be kept over win'er with 

 a much greater amount of means than most amateurs have at 

 command. In August beds of Coleus look well, and are de- 

 servedly admired, but the plants are not easily kept over the 

 winter without a structure appi-oaching a plant stove in heat ; 

 Alternantheras arc still more difiicuit to keep in a cool place ; in 

 fact, they are usually miserable-looking objects in January, and 

 many are lost. Fortimately both they and Coleuses can be 

 rapidly propagated in spring, and as neither are wanted very 

 early, their propagation may be carried on later in the season 

 than that of the Verbena and similar plants. I have sometimes 

 thought of writing an article on keeping bedding plants in winter, 

 commencing with those which endure the greatest amount of 

 cold, and going gradually upwards to such as require the greatest 

 amount of heat ; if I did so, I would place Verbenas in a warmer 

 temperature than they often receive, for although I have fre- 

 quently taken cuttings in spring from plants that have stood out 

 all winter, I have often lost cuttings in a way that I could 

 not account for, except on the ground of absence of light, heat, 

 and fresh air. AVith disease, excepting mildew, I have not 

 been much troubled; nevertheless, the failures of Verbenas 



towards the end of August, in dry summers, have been so fre- 

 quent that I grow comparatively few of them. 



In closing these remarks on this once popular plant, I would 

 ask the reason why it affords a much shorter continuance of dis- 

 play than it did twenty years ago, when such old kinds as 

 Emma, Atrosanguinea, Tweediana, Beauts Supreme, and 

 others might be reckoned on as sure to last the whole season ? 

 The failuie of Verbenas to do so has led me to very much limit 

 the number planted, and a visit to any public or private garden 

 of importance reveals the fact that this once-popular flower no 

 longer holds the place it did, and something more than the diffi- 

 culty in wintering it is the cause. — J. Eobson".] 



WONDERS OF AN AMATEUR. 

 I WONDER if the proposition laid down in two recent numbers 



of one of your contemporaries (aprojwi; of Camellias) is a correct 

 one — namely, that peat and loam mixed together in a pot, 

 become, after a certain time, injurious to the plant contained 

 in it, by the action of the acid in the former upon the alkali in 

 the latter. If so, the authorities on such matters, from Paxtou 

 down to the -editors of the "Gardeners' Dictionary." have 

 been but " blind guides." In the fourth vol. of " Pixton's 

 Magazine," 1838, which I took up by chance this evening, I 

 see that, of the plants which are represented in the first nine 

 coloured plates, we are advised to grow no less than six in a 

 mixture of "peat and loam," and in the "Gardeners' Dic- 

 tionary," published exactly thirty years later, of the first nine 

 plants of which the culture is described iu detail, we have the 

 same obnoxious mixture recommended to us in five cases. 

 With such authorities a humble amateur cannot at once im- 

 bibe the new theory, while at the same time the extreme and 

 undeniable difficulty of growing Camellias makes me grasp at 

 any explanation of my failure. 



I wonder why the use of the pot saucer in watering plants in 

 pots is not more insisted upon in gardening manuals. I look 

 upon it as not only a useful, but an indispensable adjunct, 

 and especially for two classes of plants — Ist, bulbs, which are 

 started in dampish soil, and are not watered again till their 

 shoots appear, such as most of the Iridaceoua tribe ; and 2ad, 

 succulents, which are kept almost dry from October till Feb- 

 ruary or March. The soil of the pots which contain plants 

 of these two classes, can never be so rapidly or satisfactorily 

 saturated as by the use of the saucer. It seems only reason- 

 able, too, that plants which are dried by the action of the 

 flue in a conservatory should receive moisture at the end of 

 the pot which is nearest the source of heat, and I venture to 

 say that anyone who examines the bottoms of pots which 

 stand over or near the &ae will find, especially after the great 

 amount of fire heat which this season has occasioned, that the 

 lower portion of the soil where the young roots should be is 

 nearly dust dry, while the upper inch or two of the soil is 

 saturated with water, and perhaps sour and covered with 

 moss. The same principle which induces us to water pots 

 from the top when standing oirt of doors, below the source of 

 heat, should direct us to water from the bottom when the pots 

 stand above the beating medium. Moreover, a certain tribe of 

 plants which grow on hills, such as Primulas, Auriculas, and 

 Calceolarias, even in their natural state, what with melting 

 snow and mountain streams, derive at least as much moisture 

 from below as from above. 



I wonder, too, at many other things, but, being a man of 

 business, I have no more time to spend in writing down my 

 wonders. — Hush. 



NOTES MADE DURING A TOUR IN IRELAND. 



No. 6. 



EOCKVILLE, THE SEAT OP THOMAS BEWLEY, ESQ. 



The splendid service of mail steamboats from Holyhead for 

 Dublin land all their passengers at Kingstown, the pretty and 

 fashionable Irish seaport, whence they are conveyed by rail to 

 Dublin — a distance of ten or twelve miles — through a lovely 

 country. Landing at Kingstown, one is very favourably im- 

 pressed with the beauties of Ireland ; all along the line of rail- 

 way there is the beautiful Biy of Dublin, one of the most 

 glorious that can be imagined, bounded in the distance by Hovo 

 and the craggy rocky promontory called Ireland's Eye, and 

 every now and then we catch a glimpse of Dublin herself lying 

 placidly sleeping in her misty shroud, with here and there a 

 tall chimney or a church tower peeping forth. On the other 

 Bide of the line lies a beautiful country, richly clad, finely 



