September 1, 1870. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



169 



it is allowed to gain a hold, especially on Laculias and plants 

 in a growing state. 



STOVE. 



Where there is but one house for the accommodation of tro- 

 pical plants considerable care and attention are necessary to 

 properly manage these at thiB season, as some having com- 

 pleted their season's growth require to be kept cool and rather 

 dry, in order to ripen the wood, while others in free growth 

 require to be encouraged with warmth and moisture. If there 

 is no convenience for removing to a cooler house such plants 

 as have made their growth, these should be placed together at 

 one end of the stove, keeping them sparingly supplied with 

 water at the roots, and giving air rather freely, which will 

 generally serve to prevent any attempt at second growth ; and 

 those requiring to be kept warm and moist should also be 

 placed together at the opposite end of the house, where very 

 little air should be given, using every care to keep the atmo- 

 sphere moist about them. Allamandas, Clerodendrons, &c, 

 which have done blooming, may be removed to a vinery where 

 the Grapes are ripe or ripening, for as these will require very 

 little water, they will not do much mischief in the way of 

 causing damp, and their room in the stove will be found very 

 useful for other plants. See that everything is free from 

 insects, and keep the foliage of Ixoras clean by washing with a 

 sponge and soapy water when necessary. — W. Keane. 



DOINGS OP THE LAST WEEK. 



KITCHEN GARDEN. 



In our greatest extremity, when we could obtain no water of 

 any sort except what we carted from three to four miles, we 

 had on the evening of the 22od the most genial refreshing rain 

 of the present year, and it came so softly that, whilst refreshing 

 the parched soil, it did nothiog to injure the masses of Gera- 

 nium and Calceolaria bloom. On this, the 27tb, there are 

 yellow-tinted fleecy clouds in the west, which, with a falling 

 barometer, give us hopes that we shall have more rain, and if 

 so, then we may shortly expect a green carpeted lawn to set off 

 the masses of bloom and to give additional crispness and suc- 

 culence to all our vegetables. On the whole, in the kitchen 

 garden, notwithstanding the heat and the extreme dryness, we 

 shall not suffer so much as we expected, except in the case of 

 Peas. We fear that they are gone beyond recall, though after 

 the rain some of the rows seemed as if they would break 

 afresh," and we shall leave them a little longer to see what they 

 will do. The want of Peas in September is a great want 

 indeed, but in this respect wo believe we are no worse off than 

 the generality of our neighbours, even in cases where water 

 could have been had in abundance. The Peas, even in our case, 

 suffered more from the dry, hot atmosphere, than from ex- 

 cessive dryness at the roots. A good syringing or engining over 

 the tops, could it have been given, would have been more bene- 

 ficial in many eases than watering with cold water at the roots. 



Dwarf Kidney Beans and Scarlet Runners.- — The loss of the 

 Peas made us more anxious about the Kidney Beans, and in 

 the case of both, and especially the Dwarf Kidney Beans, we had 

 the rows gone over and every Bean arriving at the seeding 

 state cut carefully off, that the strength of the plants should 

 be thrown into the free production of young succulent Beans. 

 In small gardens, where the greatest table supply from the 

 smallest space is most desirable, it is scarcely worth while to 

 save the seed, and if attempted, it is best to set aside a little 

 piece for bea'itig seed, so as to have it well ripened. Amateurs 

 should keep in mind, that a couple of Kidney Bean pods left on 

 a plant to perfect their seeds will exhaust the plants more than 

 a score of pods gathered when young and juicy. Such pods can 

 scarcely be too young, if grown a little beyond the half of their 

 full size. They Bhould never be so old as not to break across 

 freely, if they are expected to cook well. The incipient seeds 

 should never be more than visible. The almost universal custom 

 is to cut and shred even young pods before boiling, allowing 

 much of their nourishing properties to escape into the water. 

 We wish some of our readers would try boiling young Beans 

 from 3 inches long, doing nothing to them exoept nipping the 

 stalks and points off, and then report their opinion of the 

 richer flavour of the dish. 



Broad Beans, though excellent when young, and a fine stand- 

 ing dish when full grown and associated with bacon, are not 

 appreciated, because not tried, as they ought to be, when the 

 pods are young — just when the seeds are forming inside — the 

 pods boiled whole, as indicated above for young Kidney Beans, 

 and cut at table into the sizes most suitable for convenience. 



In this case, as well as the young Kidney Beans, the peculiar 

 richness is greatly owing to the insid9 of the Beans coming but 

 little in direct contact with water. We shall be glad if a hint 

 in this direction prove useful or suggestive. We have no doubt 

 that very often the simplest mode of doing anything will turn 

 out to be the best. 



Vegetable Marrows. — Not long ago we saw a housewife pare- 

 ing off the outsides or skin of young Vegetable Marrows, pre- 

 paratory to boiling them. She also cut them open. We did 

 not wonder that the lady called them poor, watery stuff at the 

 best. In our opinion they are one of the richest delicacies grown 

 — so rich that we rarely taste them above once a-year, but we 

 should have had no desire to taste those thus peeled previously, 

 so as to let the water thoroughly soak them. There are many 

 ways of using this well-named Marrow, by boiling, frying, &c, 

 but few modes for simple people are better than the following : — 

 Seleot the Marrows when young, say from 6 to S inches long, 

 and from 2i to 3J inches in diameter, cut them with a good 

 long stalk, and if clean they need nothing more ; if there 

 should be a little soil, &c, rub or wash it off without grazing 

 the skin ; place them in boiling water with a little carbonate of 

 soda in it ; try with the point of a fork once or twice to see 

 that they are done enough, but not so deeply as to let the water 

 inside. When done slice them down the middle, and remove 

 the soft inside, and then a little pepper and salt added, with or 

 without melted butter, will yield a dish a king might envy. 

 We never tasted a Vegetable Marrow where the water was per- 

 mitted to get inside freely but we considered it spoiled. Good 

 cooks, of course, can make them nice, however done, just as 

 they could mako delicious soup from flints with the good things 

 they could add to the flints ; but as Vegetable Marrows are 

 rather plentiful this season, it may not be out of place to tell 

 how they may be made most delicious. Even when they are 

 grown to a large size, as in some cottage gardens, along with 

 Gourds, for pies and puddings, the cottager might have many 

 a dish from thinnings of the young fruit, as a plant will seldom 

 bring many of a large size to maturity. To obtain .this large 

 size we hBve been mortified to see dozens of young fruit thinned 

 out and thrown away, when even a little pepper and salt and 

 boiling water would have turned them iuto a delicious dish; 

 They are so rich that it is not every one who can partake of 

 them very often, unless cooked in the simplest manner. 



Winter Vegetables. — -Thanks to a little sewage just at the 

 roots, and frequent surface-stirring and forking, the earliest 

 are more forward than we expected them to be, and after the 

 refreshing rains of Monday, we turned out a quantity of Broc- 

 coli, Coleworts, Borecoles, &c, drawing deepish drills, and 

 giving a little water along the drills after planting. Some of 

 the plants, from standing rather long and thickly in the seed 

 beds, had become somewhat leggy, and these we planted chiefly 

 with the help of a crowbar, so as to get the roots deep enough. 

 This was especially the case when we filled up the spaces be- 

 tween row3 of Gooseberries and Currants, and where we should 

 not have liked to have dug the ground too deeply, even in the 

 middle of the space. It is always well to have plenty of plants 

 in winter, even if one should pull them up early in spring. It 

 was useless to plant earlier in the weather we lately had, and 

 we did not think there was any occasion to hurry, as the first 

 plantings-out were doing well. 



Cauliflowers, after the rain, are becoming what they ought to 

 be, and we hope they will form compact heads now, instead of 

 spreading and Bhooting, as they did in the hot weather. In a 

 piece planted in an earth pit, the greater part of which is now 

 removed, and the space filled with Savoys, &c, even though 

 assisted with sewage water, hardly a third came with compact 

 heads ; the rest shot away like a bad kind of sprouting Broccoli, 

 good enough for hall purposes, but quite unfit to send to the 

 dining-room. We planted out our last piece, to which we shall 

 most likely give a little protection. 



Most of our earth and turf pits, which we use for hardening 

 off our bedding plants, are now filled with Lettuces, Little Pixie 

 Cabbage, Rose Coleworts, and the Ulm Savoy beginning to 

 heart well, and looking vigorous now, though standing merely 

 one foot apart. All these we shall get off early in winter, as 

 we should not be able to keep four-footed depredators from 

 them, but they will give a great relief to the vegetables grown 

 inside the walls. We have planted part of what we intend for 

 our earliest spring main crops of Cabbage, giving such compact 

 kinds as Veitch's Matchless 18 by 9 inches, and a larger kind, 

 alluded to previously, 24 by 15 inches. We could hardly say 

 which is the more profitable where there is a large consump- 

 tion. A head of the latter is a regular fill-basket when well 



