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JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ December 19, 1872. 



perfectly hardy, it is all tire more valuable. — J. Robson, Linton 

 Park Gardens, Maidstone. 



JOTTINGS ON THIS TEAR'S GARDENING.— No. 6. 

 A wet season, as we all know, is not favourable for a display 

 of flowers. Foliage on the whole has been more satisfactory. 

 Coloured-leaved plants are in my opinion quite as pleasing as 

 flowering subjects, and in a wet season more effective ; besides, 

 as' the amount of colour depends on the number of leaves, they 

 can be pinched into any required height and breadth ; but we 

 cannot practise this to anything approaching the same extent 

 with flowering plants. Stop these, and you prevent the flower- 

 ing for a considerable time. 



Of white-foliaged plants probably there is none that can 

 compare with Centaurea ragusina (candidissima). This sea- 

 son it has grown unusually strong, but at the same time has 

 been very good in colour. Small plants at planting-out time 

 became strong by July, and have been taken up quite large 

 with numbers of side shoots. I have given up propagating 

 these plants at any time except in spring. The plants are 

 taken up early in October, the large leaves removed, but not 

 stripped off very closely, potted in loam with a little leaf 

 soil and sand, using pots just large enough to hold the roots, 

 and placed on shelves in a house with a temperature of 45°. 

 Water is given but sparingly — never until the soil becomes 

 dry; then a good supply is afforded, and no more is given 

 until the soil becomes quite dry again, it being less prejudicial 

 for the plant to flag than for the leaves to be very fresh and 

 the soil very wet. In a short' time, with the leaves very 

 fresh but the soil wet, a reaction will set in, and the leaves 

 will fall, the plants dying upwards and dropping off at the 

 collar. In March they will have fine side shoots ; these are 

 slipped off, or rather bent downwards, and with a knife 

 severed from the plant with a clean cut upwards. We have 

 only to remove the leaves to the extent of about an inch, 

 and insert the shoots singly in 3-inch pots up to the leaves, 

 making a hole in the centre of each pot, dropping in some 

 silver sand, and, letting the base of the cutting rest on that, 

 fill round the cutting with sand, making all quite firm. If 

 the cuttings are sufficiently long to have an inch of stem, 

 or so that they can be inserted in the soil to that extent and 

 have the centre clear of the soil, it is enough. They will 

 root freely in a gentle hotbed of 70° to 75°, or in a vinery 

 with anight temperature of 60° to 65°. Keep them just moist, 

 and shade them from bright sun. In three weeks they will 

 be rooted, and should be removed to a lower temperature; 

 and by shifting into 4J-inch pots, and keeping them in a tem- 

 perature of about 50° at night, they will be fine plants by 

 May, only needing hardening-off in a cold pit or frame. They 

 like plenty of light and air. All the Centaureas may be pro- 

 pagated in the same way. 



Centaurea babylonica, a tall-growing land with finely-cut 

 rather long leaves, I do not think so highly of, though it is 

 very graceful and silvery, yet not nearly so white as C. ragusina ; 

 but the foliage is not sufficiently dense to have any great 

 effect. Unless its beauty is greater elsewhere it may well be 

 dispensed with. C. Clementei, on the other hand, is a free- 

 growing kind, producing from a crown leaves of considerable 

 length and gracefully arching over, the leaves deeply fringed 

 and lobed, and the lobes again fringed and subdivided. The 

 graceful and elegant foliage is in its early stages so densely 

 covered with down as to be perfectly white, and when fully deve- 

 loped has a fine silvery aspect. Plants from seed the first year 

 are not much as to colour ; they are, as with Cineraria maritima 

 and other white-leaved plants raised from seed, deficient in 

 that bright white or silvery appearance we have in older plants. 

 This Centaurea will become as great a favourite as C. ragusina ; 

 it is of much larger proportions, and as such will be fine for 

 large masses, and as single specimens in beds or even on 

 lawns. 



Cineraria maritima has been very fine this year. The 

 longer I grow it the more I like it. It is one of those plants 

 which never disappoint. Plants from cuttings are, however, the 

 only ones to be depended on. Seedlings are not silvery enough 

 the first year, and they are far too rank in growth. At the risk 

 of being considered as giving a great deal of trouble where 

 none is needed, I may saythat I take up a number of plants in 

 November, choosing the smallest and those having the most 

 down on the young leaves, pot them in light sandy soil with a 

 little leaf mould, place them in a house, and winter them in the 

 same way as the Centaureas — not that the plant is tender here, 



for it stands out in shrubbery borders and attains even noble 

 proportions, having a fine effect with the green of the shrubs, 

 but because out of doors it does not produce shoots from near 

 the root early enough for spring propagation. The old shoots 

 are bent down, even if they break at 2 or 3 inches from the 

 soil, about the middle of January, and a great many shoots rise 

 from the base of each. When they are about 3 or 4 inches long 

 they are cut off close to the point whence they proceed, and are 

 treated the same as the Centaureas ; only, being much smaller, 

 they are put in about an inch apart in pans, and when rooted 

 are potted-off. If put in as late as April they are good for 

 planting-out, being left in the cutting-pans or boxes until 

 planting time. 



With Centaurea, Cineraria, and the indispensable Cerastium, 

 I care for none of the other white-leaved plants. Taste differs, 

 it is well that it should ; but what is the use of multiplying 

 varieties of plants that give us nothing new, different, or better 

 than what we have already in older subjects ? 



Iresine Herbstii has done uncommonly well, keeping very 

 close to the ground, and being of very dense habit. I have never 

 seen it finer than it was this season. It is not only of a very 

 different colour — brownish crimson, with lighter-coloured veins 

 — from I. Lindeni, but of different habit. The latter is stiff and 

 erect with very much longer, pointed leaves ; the colour deep 

 dark red, approaching black, the veins lighter-coloured. It is 

 not nearly so bold in foliage as I. Herbstii, but has a more 

 telling appearance. I. Lindeni is very much the hardier. 

 I. Herbstii was cut off by frost at the end of September, whilst 

 I. Lindeni was uninjured. Both strike very freely from cuttings 

 which I put in during September in a gentle hotbed, keep in 

 pans until about February in a temperature of about 50°, and 

 then pot-off. 



Pyrethrurn Golden Feather has disappointed me, as it in- 

 variably does when the plants employed are from cuttings. 

 To have it with fine foliage and few flowers it should be sown 

 in heat in February, pricked-out about an inch apart in pans 

 or boxes when large enough, and grown on, planting out after 

 hardening-off in May. From cuttings it grows indifferently, 

 and exhibits far too many of its starry white flowers. 



The only other self-coloured-leaved plant that I have this 

 season is Perilla nankinensis, which in a good rich soil always 

 does well. Dell's Crimson Beet in the kitchen garden was 

 very good in colour and outline. 



Abutilon Thompsoni with its golden-blotched leaves is fine 

 for the centre of a bed, and has done well this season. It is 

 seen to the best advantage when stiff plants about a foot high 

 are employed. 



Alternantheras grew less and less every day after being put 

 out, and were a failure. 



Mrs. Pollock Tricolor Pelargonium was not nearly so good in 

 colour or growth as Lady Cullum, which in my opinion is one 

 of the best. Golden Fleece, Cloth of Gold, and Golden Chain 

 grow less after being planted out. The only one of the gold- 

 variegated sorts that does any good is Crystal Palace Gem. 

 Bijou does here better than any of the silver- variegated kinds. 

 Bright Star is, however, good, and of fine habit. Prince 

 Silverwings is very beautiful, and evidently stands wet well. 



Of the flowering Zonal Pelargoniums none has this year 

 surpassed the very old, and what many consider obsolete, Tom 

 Thumb, which as to habit is the model of what a bedding 

 Pelargonium ought to be, being dwarf, and having as great a 

 disposition to grow sideways as many kinds of the day have to 

 grow upwards, and make long shoots without the brandling 

 habit or side growth of Tom Thumb. It has also a not very 

 large, but smooth bright green leaf without admixture, where- 

 as many of the " lions " have a rough hairy leaf, of anything 

 but a bright green colour, and are not improved by the dark 

 zone, conspicuous at a near view, but, at the distance at which 

 bedding plants are mostly seen, lost in the general foliage or 

 leaf- colouring of the plants. Tom Thumb's trusses of bloom 

 being very much less than in the newer kinds is an advantage 

 rather than otherwise, for as a rule the large trussers produce 

 them far apart, whilst the smaller trusses are thrown up abun- 

 dantly. They afford the colour we wish more evenly disposed — 

 in fact, give us the colour we want in then- self-coloured setting, 

 whilst the large-trussed kinds afford colour disposed often 

 irregularly over the mass. Then a small truss is not so liable to 

 suffer from continued wet as a large truss, the dead remains of 

 the first flowers turning mouldy, and the whole truss having a 

 dead appearance. Tom Thumb has one other good property — 

 it rarely seeds, even in a hot and dry season ; but how few of the 

 others do not ? I mention these things in proof of our still 



