August 28, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
183 
COMING EVENTS 
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Aberdare Show. 
12TII Sunday after Trinity. 
St,ratford-on-Avon Show. 
Ghsgow, Brighton, and Bath Showi 
THE SEASON AND ITS DIFFICULTIES—SOWING 
AND PLANTING IN DKY WEATHER. 
EW if any operations in the routine of gardening 
are more agreeable, provided the soil and 
weather are favourable for the successful prose¬ 
cution of the work, than sowing and planting. 
The labour, if labour it can be called, of carrying 
out these primary duties is pleasant rather than 
irksome, amounting merely to healthy exercise. 
The work, under the conditions indicated, is 
always accompanied by a feeling of hope 
which lightens labour, and of bright anticipations ; the re¬ 
wards already seen in the distance—thrifty crops coming in 
just at the desired time, and thus enabling the cultivator to 
rejoice in the fulfilment of his cherished aspirations of pro¬ 
viding all that is needed without a blank in the supply. For 
those reasons, and under favourable circumstances, the days 
glide pleasantly away, because there is no feeling that time 
has been fruitlessly spent, and the gardener rests in the 
consciousness that having sown and planted he has only to 
wait for the harvest—the gathering of the crops at the 
allotted time. 
Very different are his feelings in a season like the pre¬ 
sent. Instead of sowing and planting in confidence—if he 
sows and plants at all—the work is done with feelings of 
doubt and anxiety lest all his labour shall be in vain. He 
looks forward for a time of disappointment when seasonable 
produce is absent, and at the same time a feeling haunts him 
that the difficulties of the present will not be remembered by 
those who expect, but cannot have, the usual bountiful supply 
of the usual vegetables at the usual time. 
Salads fail, as they must fail at some time or other after 
a season like this, and surprise is expressed at the occurrence 
by those who know nothing of the obstacles, at once powerful 
and unpreventible, that have caused the collapse. Hard and 
stringy Turnips no one can be surprised at now, for the cause 
and the evil are concurrent and cannot be overlooked. It is 
when months elapse between the effect and the cause that 
difficulties arise and misunderstandings become rife ; when 
the customary daily supply of Parsley fails and Spinach 
cannot be had for the asking ; when young Cabbages have to 
be waited for tediously, if not impatiently; when Cauli¬ 
flowers lag behind, and the Onion store, lightened by the 
maggot and the drought, is exhausted before the bulbs form 
in the autumn-sown crops—these are the contingencies that 
depress the gardener now, and not the less because the un¬ 
toward circumstances of the present may be forgotten when 
the pinch comes, as come it will and must, for the sufficient 
reason that what cannot be sown at the proper time and 
under ordinarily favourable conditions cannot be reaped in 
due season. 
It is well to place on record the extraordinary difficiilties 
and practically immoveable impediments of the period. 
When the soil is like a hot and dry ash-heap on the one 
hand, and baked like bricks on the other, as it is at the pre- 
No. 218.— VoL. IX., Third Series, 
sent moment in many districts, it is simply impossible that 
crops can be raised and the supply of produce maintained 
throughout winter and spring. When the time of failure or 
of scarcity comes let not the cause be forgotten. A gardener 
is no more open to reproach under these circumstances than 
a farmer is for the loss of his crops during a constantly wet 
harvest. 
If rain comes soon, however, and copiously—as it is 
earnestly hoped it will come before these notes are printed— 
there will yet be time for some important crops to be sown 
with a fair prospect that the much-feared blank in the 
vegetable supply will not be serious ; but if the droughts and 
heat continue special means must be adopted with the object 
of raising plants so as to reduce the after inconvenience to 
the smallest possible dimensions. 
There are numbers of men comparatively young in charge 
of gardens who have never experienced a tropical season like 
the present. They may remember hot and dry summers, 
but other persons had to bear the responsibility of whatever 
inconvenience followed ; but now for the flrst time hundreds 
of persons are face to face with the ponderous difficulty of 
exhausted crops and lifeless land—lifeless because incapable 
of imparting life to the seed that is placed in it on account 
of the total absence of moisture near the surface. Older 
men have had to encounter similar difficulties before, and 
their experience of the past may possibly be of some slight 
service in the present period of drought. 
Gardeners have waited and watched and hoped for the rain 
to enable them to sow the seed of some staple crops, until 
they cannot safely wait any longer. Eain or no rain, plants 
of Cabbages, Cauliflowers, and Onions must be raised, while 
Parsley and Spinach must be had by hook or by crook. It 
is of no use drawing drills an inch deep in the ordinary 
manner, and sowing as in ordinary seasons, and trusting to 
after watering to bring up the plants. Watering must be 
done before sowing, and shading resorted to afterwards if 
success is to be won. Drills must be made of four times the 
usual depth, and flooded repeatedly until the water passes 
down right into the subsoil; it is easy to level in the drills 
until they are of the proper depth, water again, then sow, 
cover the seed and shade the surface with whatever material 
is the most convenient, whether mats or Pea haulm. This 
for Spinach that cannot be transplanted. For Onions, Cab¬ 
bages, Lettuces, and Cauliflowers, specially prepared beds will 
be better worth making than for a lot of Calceolaria cuttings. 
A saturated base is of the first importance, and a mass of 
leaf soil—the best of all moisture-holding mediums—may 
then, with shade, be trusted to bring forth healthy plants 
quickly that will transplant well when the rain comes. A 
few square feet of ground thus prepared has been found in¬ 
valuable in seasons like the present, and if such important 
crops are not worth this trifling preparation—trifling at lease 
it is considered for Stocks and Asters—nothing is, for the 
vegetables named are of infinitely greater moment than any 
ordinary flowers. 
In maintaining the Onion supply do not, if the summer 
crops are light and spring bulbs are wanted at the earliest 
possible moment, rely on the Giant Roccas or any other 
giants. These are fine, but late in comparison with 
the Queen or even the ordinary Silver-skinned pickling 
Onion, which, if sown in the autumn and grown in good 
soil, attains to far more than pickling proportions. Do not 
forget this is the advice of an old man who has been left in 
the lurch by relying on the giants, but have Onions when they 
are wanted, with larger ones to follow if desired. And let 
him, at the risk of being voted old-fashioned, advise all who 
can do so to get a few bulbs of the old Potato Onion and 
plant them, at least some of them, in October, the remainder 
in February, a foot apart, like Potatoes, just beneath the sur¬ 
face, and Onions, good Onions, will be had sooner than by 
any other means. This is written in view of an Onion diffi¬ 
culty next spring in consequence of the lightness of the crops, 
““ No. 1871 .—Vol.LXXI., Old Series. 
