192 
OPERATIONS FOR SEPTEMBER. 
That continued drought has a tendency to produce mildew, we have had a striking demonstration 
this season. On Roses and other plants it has appeared very copiously ; and there can be no 
question as to whether aridity or dampness has caused it in such a season as the present. Where it 
is likely to do injury, it can be destroyed by sprinkling a little flowers of sulphur over the parts 
affected ; but when the leaves on which it has fastened are beginning to decay, perhaps it will be 
better to leave it to its fate. 
As a dry summer is favourable to the existence and perpetuation of insects, care should be 
taken to extirpate them wherever they may be found. Among the minor tribes, multiplication 
is carried on with such extraordinary rapidity, and in such prodigious numbers, that he who 
disregards them for a time on account of their fewness, considering the smallness of their number 
a sufficient plea for not effecting their destruction, lays up for himself a large store of future 
annoyance. All the old maxims regarding the importance of remedying evils timely, attach, with 
singular force, to the operations of the plant cultivator. And he who clears away insects directly 
they are discovered, not only saves himself much trouble, but spares both the plant they have 
attacked, and the others that are near it, from a large amount of detriment. 
We have before advised that the occasion of turning greenhouse plants out of the houses 
should be seized for cleansing the latter, and putting them in thorough order. If the plants have 
been at all infested with insects, every corner and crevice should be duly washed out, and the 
surface of the earth beneath the stages or the trellis-like paths taken away and renewed. The eggs, 
or larvse, or young of insects, are commonly placed in some retired and sheltered spot, and 
everything that can harbour them ought to be investigated or removed. Where wooden or iron 
trellis paths, covering flues, exist, they should be taken up, and the space beneath them, where 
rubbish is apt to accumulate, properly purified. 
Ere the plants are returned to the houses, they, too, should be subjected to a complete purifi- 
cation ; washing insects and dust from the leaves, cutting off all decaying foliage, or other matters, 
and afterwards taking away the upper part of the soil into which insects may have dropped, 
replacing it with fresh, and washing the pots. Stove and succulent plants should further be 
cleaned in the same manner before they are shifted to the greenhouse, while the stove itself is 
similarly purified. If there are pits with bark or soil in them, these latter may be thrown away, 
and other earth or bark substituted, or only the portion that lies on the top may be changed. 
The good influences of the dry weather on all potted species of plants should be allowed now 
to exert themselves fully in ripening their new wood. As to watering, they ought never to be 
permitted to flag, even though they should require attention more than once a day ; but neither 
ought they to be kept wet, or supplied as bountifully as if they were in a growing condition. All 
their advances after this time (save in the case of peculiar tribes, as Pelargoniums) must be 
restrained, and the young shoots cut off as fast as they make their appearance. Without these 
checks, the valuable flowering branches they have made will be reduced and enfeebled, and a 
foundation will be laid for bringing the plants into a sickly and straggling state. 
In flower-gardens containing numerous beds, there is a necessity for securing some diversity 
in the arrangement of the flowers year after year ; and the easiest way of doing this is to have a 
plan of the spot, number the beds, and keep a list of their annual contents. The present month 
will be a favourable time for deciding how the plants are to be disposed next year, since the eye 
can judge best of anything of the kind when it has something to direct its scrutiny. Errors in 
taste, with reference to both colour and form, can now, moreover, be most readily rectified. 
Budding can still be performed, if it has heretofore been neglected. Cuttings of half-hardy 
plants may be struck in a trifling bottom-heat to any requisite extent. Verbenas, and plants of 
an allied nature, should be layered in preference to being propagated by cuttings ; just placing 
the lower part of a shoot beneath the soil, and putting a little earth on it. Those herbaceous or 
other species which are wanted to bloom in the following year ought not to be allowed to blossom 
again now, which some of them will be inclined to do. Chrysanthemums must be timely sup- 
ported by stakes, leaving only three or four stems ? and tying these separately to the stake. 
Dahlia flowers may be guarded from earwigs by hanging pieces of bean-stalk, or similarly light 
tubular materials, on their branches. The insects will enter these, and can be shaken out and 
killed each day. 
