THE CHRYSANTHEMUM, AND ITS CULTURE. 
begin to grow, and they are then in a fair way 
of striking. Continue your watchfulness, the 
drying of the glasses, the moistening of the 
sand, and removing any that appear inclined 
to damp off ; and when they have grown, and 
exhibit any appearance of having struck, pre- 
pare for potting them off. Use pots of the 
size of forty-eight to the cast, or large sixties. 
Put crocks at the bottom enough to ensure good 
drainage. Use nothing but loam from rotted 
turves if you can get it. You do not want to 
excite rapid growth ; on the contrary, the 
slower they grow the better, so that they keep 
growing in a healthy state ; put some of the 
loam, say half or two-thirds full, and then turn 
out the ball from the cutting-pot, or hold them 
sideways, and strike them gently sideways ; 
the sand will fall out, and the ball may be so 
loosened, that withdrawing the pot with a 
jerk will leave it on the bench. By pressing 
the ball it will part a little, so as to enable 
you to take the cuttings away one by one with 
earth about their fibres. Hold them upright 
in the pot, and place them so that the soil will 
come fully as high as the sand was. The 
earth should be pressed all round the root, 
moderately close, but not hard, and the pots 
knocked gently on their bottoms to settle the 
earth properly. After watering them, they 
should be placed in a frame, and the light 
covered down close the first day or two, and 
they must be properly shaded, or they will 
droop. Indeed they ought, if it were conve- 
nient, to be a little while in gentle heat, but 
this is rarely practicable, unless slight hot- 
beds were made on purpose. After the first 
day or two they must have plenty of air, and 
as soon as they have recovered the check they 
receive by transplanting, they may be removed 
to the open air on a hard bottom of pavement, 
or some contrivance which they cannot root 
into, for they will soon protrude their roots 
through the bottom of the pot, and strike them 
into a hard gravel walk if they are allowed to 
do so. They may have all the sun but an 
hour or two of the hottest in the middle of 
the day, but even this will not hurt them if 
they are kept well watered. The only danger 
is that, if they are neglected, the soil very 
soon bakes dry, and they then begin to suffer, 
and the leaves turn red or yellow. The best 
situation is a border which is protected from 
the midday sun, and made hard by paving, 
or having slates or wooden planks laid on ; in 
a very short time the pots will be filled with 
roots, and a change will be required, but the 
plants will be just ready to turn out in the 
clumps, borders, &c, whei*e they are to be 
flowered in their dwarf state. They may be 
planted out without dressing, three feet apart, 
to allow room for other subjects between them. 
They will flower at less than half the height 
they would have attained without cutting and 
striking, besides which they will not have lost 
their foliage nor their colour. The plants 
that are put out thus, would the next year be 
just as tall as any other ; and the only way to 
make them otherwise, is to take off the tops 
as we have described. 
IN POTS AS DWARF FLOWERING PLANTS. 
We have already described how the cuttings 
are to be taken and treated up to the filling of 
the first pots with roots. At the time when 
they are turned out as we have described for 
the beds and clumps, when dwarfing is an 
object, a certain portion may be continued in 
pots, but they will at that period require to be 
shifted into other pots a size larger. Nothing 
more need be done than striking the edge of 
the pot against the potting-table, while held 
the wrong way upwards ; the ball wall leave 
the pot whole. The crocks need not be dis- 
turbed, but a few being placed at the bottom 
of the new pot, and enough earth to just cover 
them, the ball may be placed in whole, as deep 
as may be, and the soil filled in all round, up 
as high as the edge of the new pot ; if the soil 
come higher up the plant than before, so much 
the better ; a gentle watering to settle the 
new earth round the ball will be necessary, 
and they may be then placed again in their 
out-of-door locality, attention being paid to 
their occasional moisture. They will all be 
more or less dwarf, according to the season, 
but in the general w r ay they require no other 
attention. We have already stated that the 
time to take these cuttings may be June, 
July, or August ; some, indeed, may be taken 
as late as September. It would be always 
found that the latest struck cuttings were the 
most dwarf when they bloomed, but it will be 
sometimes found difficult to strike the latest, 
and this is our chief reason for striking at 
different seasons. There will be no difficulty 
in procuring cuttings from the pots or out-of- 
door plants, but they answer better from 
potted plants, because they are always for- 
warder. They may again fill their pots with 
roots, and require a shift, but they ought to 
bloom in thirty-two sized pots, that is, pots of 
thirty-two to the cast, and technically called 
thirty-twos, and if they fill ever so much with 
roots, they must not be shifted into any larger, 
because you rather wish to check the growth 
than encourage it. In September the frost may 
come pretty sharply,and damage potted plants, so 
that about the middle of that month they should 
be placed in frames, and carefully closed and 
covered at night, on the least sign of severe 
weather ; but if this be not expected or likely, 
the glass is covering enough. The latest 
struck cuttings may be kept under glass all 
through, for as they may be potted off the 
b2 
