192 
OPERATIONS FOR SEPTEMBER. 
As at this season, more than at any other, the less hardy sorts of border plants 
produce their flowers, those persons who are anxious to hybridize any choice species, 
will now be on the alert to watch for a period favourable for the accomplishment of 
the process of inter- impregnation. Most individuals are doubtless aware that a 
shower of rain, or the contact of liquid in any manner with the pollen, within a 
certain time after its application to the stigma, will completely nullify the operation. 
For this reason, then, as well as on account of the crosses frequently occasioned by 
bees, it is most prudent to retain the plants intended for hybridization in frames, 
pits, or greenhouses. The desired result will thus be more unerringly insured, and 
much disappointment averted. 
Propagation by cuttings is now again beginning to arrest the consideration 
and engage the skill of the flower-gardener ; such a mode of increase, at least of 
the established species, being generally suspended through the hottest part of the 
summer season. All those tender plants which are at present decorating the 
flower-borders, can and must be forthwith multiplied in this manner. Particular 
directions, or lists of species, are not needed here ; the general terms we have used 
having rendered sufficiently obvious the subjects and objects of our remarks. 
For striking cuttings during the summer months, some of the most celebrated 
nurserymen plant them in pots in the open air, merely placing them on the north 
side of a wall for shelter, and securing due preservation from rain by a hand-glass, 
or shelving piece of slate. In the spring and autumn, they are always kept in a 
propagating house, and the pots plunged in heating bark or manure, or simply in 
sawdust, beneath which flues or pipes, supplied with artificial heat, are conducted. 
Perhaps the latter is the better system, since the degree of temperature is thus 
more easily regulated, and the atmosphere never impregnated with those rank 
or extremely moist fumes, which are so frequently fatal to slender plants, and 
particularly to unrooted cuttings. A proper moisture can always be maintained, by 
watering the material used for surrounding the pots, whenever it indicates too great 
dryness. 
September is likewise the month in which budding is performed on standard 
roses, and other similar plants. It is indispensable to success, that the buds 
inserted, and the wood of stocks employed, should be in a mature state ; otherwise 
the former will wither under the influence of an autumnal sun, and a vital union 
will never be effected. Those who wish to have more than one or two kinds 
budded on the same stock, should be careful to choose sorts resembling each other 
in habit. Nothing tends more powerfully to destroy the beauty and symmetrical 
effect of a standard rose, than an unnatural combination of luxuriant and weak, 
vigorous and stunted growing varieties on one stock ; and yet this is the inevitable 
consequence of introducing buds of an indiscriminate mixture of sorts. Where, 
however, the habit is known to approximate, a diversity of colour is rather to be 
wished than deprecated. 
