432 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ Novetr.ber IS, 1884. 
only ordinary taste ? Where can he learn to raise seeds, to 
pot plants, to mix various composts, and to adapt his man¬ 
agement to the varied treatment of Fuchsias, Pelargoniums, 
Cinerarias, Camellias, &o. Where are the technical schools 
for gardeners ? The only available mode at present accessible 
is by change from place to place, and from gardener to gar¬ 
dener. If the head men taught the under ones perhaps no 
better mode could be desired, but in the majority of in¬ 
stances the candidates have to pick up their knowledge 
usually by themselves, and not unfrequently from unwilling 
teachers. 
ASPARA.GU3 IJI AUTUMN AND WINTER. 
Last autumn we cut the first of our forced Asparagus on 
November lOth. This year we have been a week later in putting 
it in, and will be the same in cutting. The roots we lift now are 
from four years to five years old, and have been grown wide apart 
and in a sunny position. The old stems are cut off close to the 
surface of the soil, and then the roots are lifted carefully without 
breaking any of the small rootlets. About two dozen good roots 
will produce several dishes of useful shoots, and we lift this 
number and put them in to force every fortnight all through the 
winter. 
At times when we have to supply for shooting parties and 
extra company we put in more roots ; but lifting them in small 
quantities and putting them in often is a good plan. We never 
allow the roots to become dry before they are placed in the 
forcing quarters, as the roots being so succulent they would soon 
shrivel and lose strength. Our favourite forcing place, wh ch we 
use every winter, is the bed of a Cucumber pit. Sometimes there 
is a corner of this empty, which is then filled, and if the Cucumbers 
are in their mounds of soil and do not occupy the whole bed we 
fill up all round with Asparagus roots. A quantity of fresh 
leaves is put under the roots and then they are packed in as 
closely as possible. Old soil from the potting shed is then put 
over them in sufficient quantity to cover the roots and no more. 
A thorough supply of water is then given with tepid water, and 
the work is completed. If they require more water before the 
growths appear it is given them. With a bottom heat of 75'’ and 
a top heat of 60^ the heads will be ready for cutting twelve days 
or fifteen days after forcing begins, and the same roots will 
continue producing shoots for a. fortnight at least. 
Some think it is a pity to lift and force good Asparagus roots, 
but this is not my opinion, as it is such an easy matter to keep 
up a supply of roots by sowing a quantity of seed annually, and 
there is no vegetable so valuable in winter as Asparagus. We 
invariably hear from headquarters respecting what we send in, 
especially in November and December, and what we hear amply 
compensates us for all the trouble taken with the plants. Last 
year our employer informed us that he once bought Asparagus in 
Paris in November at £5 per bundle, and we told him that was 
just the value of what he was then having for dinner three times 
nweek!—A Kitchen Gabdbnek. 
ENEMIES AND FRIENDS OF THE ROSE. 
Although the past season will be allowed by most growers 
to have been better than the average as to beauty and size of the 
blooms, it must be granted that the favourite flower has not been 
without its enemies, both as to insects and weather. The mild 
winter seemed to give the plants but Idtle rest, slow growth con¬ 
tinuing; pruning time dismissed an immense quantity of shoots, 
and 1 suspect many hundreds of buds in most gardens. As far 
as my experence goes, there was not nearly as much bleeding 
after the pruning as might have been expected, certainly not as 
much as I have had in previous seasons, when appai’ently the 
plants were less advanced. 
My Roses are in two different gardens, one close to my house, 
the other three or four hundred yards away. In the garden 
behind my house the primary bud was almost generally a failure; 
this I attributed to the larvae of one of the small moths. The 
other garden, however, was singularly free, and I begin to 
doubt whether the culprits were not much larger creatures. My 
small boy keeps two or three pairs of Baldhead pigeons, and I 
saw these frequently on the Rose beds, and am very suspicious 
that these were the depredators. Has any other Rose-grower, 
more amongst his plants, noticed whether pigeons do pick out 
the bud as it starts to grow ? Anyway, mine were gone, and at 
almost every joint, two, sometimes three, little weakly shoots 
replaced the sturdy growth I had hoped for. Doubtless under 
such circumstances I ought to have gone over the beds again 
early and rubbed away all but the strongest of these. I omitted 
this until somewhat late, and the blooms in this garden have not 
been remarkable this season. Then in the early part of May, 
when growth was pushing, came the severest pinch of the whole 
winter, 12° of frost, and the young growth did not approve 
of it 
Then in the early part of June came such a visitation of the 
aphis tribe as I never recollect. It is not surprising that the 
public should believe they come in the air, for it is difficult for 
those unacquainted with the natural history of the green fly to 
realise that the myriads clinging round and hiding a shoot 
entirely from view may all be the produce of a single female; 
but such it is. The life of the perfect female is not very long, 
yet Reaumur calculated that one might be the great-great-great¬ 
grandmother in her own lifetime of 5,000,000,000 descendants! 
If but a tithe of this calculation is correct, it is easy to under¬ 
stand the rapid appearance. I urge those, then, who have the 
time to spend among their plants, to deal at once with the 
first specimens seen. The rapid increase is dependent on a 
species of disbudding as it were, by which female aphides are 
continually given off, and these juveniles very shortly do like¬ 
wise, hence the value of securing the early solitary specimens. 
When, however, the plague has spread, we must act rapidly, 
would we save our exhibition blooms from injury. Each of these 
tiny pests has her piercer into the soft stem, and is diligently 
sucking juices that should go to the bud. 
The Fir tree oil will kill all pests, but it does not mix kindly 
with water, and it has a power for evil as well as good; by it the 
foliage may easily be marred. Spraying the shoots is not as 
successful as I had hoped it would prove. So many escape 
destruction, that two days after the shoot is as thickly covered 
as eve]'. A year or two ago someone kindly gave in your pages 
a method of preparing petroleum for green fly. This I have 
used freely this year, and prefer it to the Fir tree oil, and it is 
far less expensive. I take a pudding basin and put in it some of 
the petroleum preparation, and go round carefully, bending down 
each shoot and sha’ang it in the petroleum, sometimes gently 
rubbing the shoot between the finger and thumb. Some few 
cannot be thus treated for fear of breakages, here I keep wetting 
my finger and thumb and wiping the shoot. The petroleum 
preparation does not leave the tame soapy look on the foliage 
that the oil does. 
Both the;e remedies, being death to all insect life, are apt to 
kill some of our best friends at the same time. The innocent 
often suffer for the guilty, and in using either of these valuable 
aphicides we doubtless often slay one that is working hard for 
us in the same direction. The larvae of one of the Syrphidse is 
one of our most valuable helps in keeping down the numbers of 
the ajihides; but, alas ! it has a resemblance to a grub, and there¬ 
fore rarely escapes the gardener’s szjueeze when seen; and yet 
hjw valuable is this larva, and how widely should it be known by 
all interested in gardening! The two other chief destroyers of 
the aphides, the ladybird and the lace-winged fly, have not in 
their larval state the same resemblance to a maggot, and there¬ 
fore possibly are at least considered innocent, and so escape; 
not so the larva of the Syrphus, by far the most useful. 
It is very difficult to so describe this larva as to make a person 
who has never watched it distinguish it from an ordinary grub. 
It may be of various co’ours; nay, somewhat like the chameleon, 
it may change its colour —that is, if living on the green fly it is 
green, but the same specimen transferred to a Cherry tree and 
feasting on the black aphis will soon take on a blackish colour. 
The great difference between this larva and an ordinary grub is 
that the head is pointed, and that when extended it gradually 
becomes thicker towards the tail, and this appears as if cut off 
square. The action of this larva, which is blind, is peculiar when 
in search of food; the tail half of the body is, as it were, fixed, 
whilst the pointed head is lifted up and put down again in search 
of aphides. If in this foraging an aphis is met with, it is quickly 
seized, lifted in the air, and sucked dry, and the voracious larva 
“asks for more.” The number that it will devour is surprising; 
1 suspect one to be in the neighbourhood if many empty skins of 
aphides are about on the shoot. M'hen this larva assumes its 
chrysalis form it resembles a frozen drop of green water on a 
leaf, having one end rather pointed. If such an excrescence be 
found fastened to a leaf, let gardeners leave the same, it may be 
the parent of countless allies. 
In the gardening world the destruction of the earlier aphides 
is of vast importance, and on my Morello Cherry trees, in years 
gone by, I fancy I have saved my crop by watching for and 
destroying the scattered females on first appearing. 
Another larva has been more than usually destructive with 
me during the past season. Every Rose-grower must have occa¬ 
sionally noticed a Rose shcot die off for a few inches. If this be 
