Delphiniums I should be glad of advice on the following problems relating to 
the cultivation of Delphiniums. 
(i) The vexed question as to the division of the plant at stated 
intervals. Some say that it should, as a matter of routine, be divided 
not less often than every three years; while others claim that so long 
as the plant is doing well it should on no account be touched, 
(2) The question of degeneration of promising forms. I raise 
several hundred plants every year (or did before the war), and I was 
greatly impressed by the way that forms which bid fair in their second 
or third year to be of high value often degenerated and became so 
poor that they had to be scrapped. The plants in question had good 
soil, situation, and adequate watering and mulching. 
(3) The cause of etiolation of apparently good plants in a normal 
season and with proper treatment. 
(4) The use of superphosphate in soils that need it. This is, of 
course, a question of soil analysis. 
(5) The value of obtaining a new strain of choice seed from time to 
time, and not using your own seed year by year. 
(6) It is high time that Delphiniums were classified according to 
nature of growth. I divide mine into three classes. I used to have 
long descriptive labels, but now each selected plant is numbered by 
a permanent label and described in a record book, one copy of which 
is kept in the gardener's shed and the other in my library. One can 
watch the progress or degeneration by glancing at the yearly entries. 
A. W. R. 
[The question of the division of these plants at stated intervals is 
one that each cultivator must settle for himself. Divided not less 
often than every three years ensures a welcome increase of stock and, 
in the year following the replanting, that class of spike which provides 
the finest flowers. It does not follow, however, that a particularly 
good display may be not forthcoming by any other means. It often is. 
Only a few yards from where this note is penned there are, indeed, the 
evidences of it: plants of 8 feet high that have been in their position 
seven years without manure of any kind, organic, liquid or artificial, 
and none given even at planting-time, having made a glorious display. 
At the same time it has to be admitted that, in the case of soUtary 
plants, only soUtary clumps remain; whereas, if these had been divided 
and replanted three years ago, the clumps might easily have been 
increased four-fold, whUe their size to-day would hardly be less than 
those which had remained undivided twice as long. Moreover, it is 
'' the long undivided plant which suffers most when deterioration sets 
in, and which takes the longest time to recover. In short, periodical 
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