December 2 1836 ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
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COMING EVENTS 
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Potato Exhibition at Westminster Aquarium (three Says). 
2nd Sunday in Advent. 
Royal Hort. Society, Fruit and Floral Committees at 11 A.M. 
National Chrysanthexum Society, Floral Meeting at 3 P.M. 
WATERING PLANTS IN WINTER. 
PROBABLY the art of watering plants will never 
be learned by a vast number of persons who are 
engaged or interested in their culture. The 
subject has been written about time after time, 
and rules of guidance laid down as explicitly as 
the somewhat complex matter permits ; but the 
instructions given appear to be misapprehended 
by some and soon forgotten by others, so that 
the necessity for further teaching is always with 
us; and the more surely is this so from the fact that young 
gardeners and new amateurs are ever joining the ranks of 
the great community of cultivators. We welcome all of 
them, because the more active personal interest that is taken 
in the work which it is our duty and pleasure to foster the 
better will it be for the horticultural industry, and for those 
who take delight in the healthy and agreeable pursuit of 
gardening, and who educate themselves to practise success¬ 
fully in whatever branch they may engage as a source of 
pleasure or as a means of livelihood. Nothing is so encourag¬ 
ing to amateurs as steady progressive improvement, and 
nothing so conducive to the future well-being of gardeners as 
the acquirement of sound knowledge on the various details 
that have to be mastered before competence can be assured. 
One of these is the apparently simple, yet highly important 
and not easily learned, duty of watering plants both in 
summer and winter. 
It has never been the policy of the conductors of this 
Journal to neglect what may b9 termed the simplicities of the 
calling in which its readers are engaged, nor to ignore the 
wants of the most inexperienced who desire assistance on any 
point on which they lack information. We exist to aid those 
who need assistance, and should regret if any searcher for 
knowledge should hesitate to appeal to us from a lurking 
fear that he is thereby betraying his incapacity. Everyone 
must be incapable at some time, and we have the greatest 
hope of those who do not hesitate to ask what they wish to 
know, however rudimentary the matter of their inquiries 
may be. 
We have been led into these remarks from the manner 
in whioh requests for information have reached us this week, 
three of which are on the same subject, namely—watering 
plants in winter so as to avoid damping, a subject that can¬ 
not be considered apart from that of ventilation. One of 
our friends is in trouble about his Primulas, which he says 
will “go off leaf by leaf till there are only a few flower 
spikes gauntly rising from a potful of soil, and the less water 
he gives them the more quickly they appear to decay.” 
Another gave himself the trouble to call at our office, because, 
as he said, he “ did not like to trouble us with a letter on 
such a plain matter as to how often he ought to water 
some continental Camellias he had obtained in 5-inch pots, 
the plants well set with buds which he was fearful would fall 
as heretofore.” This sensitive gentleman thought he could 
get the information from one of the clerks over the counter 
without the Editors becoming aware of his personalty. But 
as clerks are not Camellia growers, the appeal had to be 
made to higher quarters. Such pride is pardonable, and not 
the slightest reproach is applied to our subscriber under the 
circumstances. 
A third request is from a gentleman, the employer, to 
quote his words, of “ a most careful gardener, but so afraid 
of damp that he waters his plants every day, only giving 
just a little.” The owner thinks there is some danger of the 
soil, while moist on the surface, being too dry below, and 
requests advice on the subject. This letter is marked “ pri¬ 
vate ” or it would have been published, with comments 
thereon, that might possibly have been of service to the 
writer of it, and suggestive to others. The diffidence of our 
friends is respected, and such help as can be given to them, 
and others similarly situated, is readily accorded. 
Our first observation on the question of plants “damp¬ 
ing ” in frames and greenhouses in the winter will possibly 
take some persons by surprise, but its truth will be admitted 
by others of wider experience. It is this. Numbers of 
plants are ruined by the decay of their stems and the base of 
their leafstalks in winter through being kept too dry at the 
roots. The very fear of giving water, and the manner and 
time of giving it, create the evil that it is desired to avert. 
Applying just sufficient water to moisten the surface of the 
soil daily, and no more, is the worst practice that can be 
adopted, and the evil is aggravated if the water is given 
towards the close of the day. 
To begin with, the whole of the plants in a collection 
never require water at the same time, and to give it to those 
that do not need it is to do them distinct and decided injury. 
This is an old story, but it is true, and it is better and more 
useful to tell it once again, and with emphasis, than to 
search for some novelty to express and record nonsense. 
Again, to give an uniform quantity of water to all plants, 
regardless of their differing conditions, can no more be de¬ 
fended than could the unheard of practice of making a weak 
and helpless child drink as much a3 a strong man engaged 
in exhaustive work. This method of giving support to plants 
and individuals is alike unreasonable, yet while it is often 
adopted in the case of the former, common sense rises in 
rebellion at the very suggestion of its application to the 
latter. Let the same common sense be exercised in giving 
support to plants, increasing or diminishing it according to 
the measure of their activity and exertions, and very different 
results will follow than from those accruing from an indul- 
gence in the free and easy policy of treating all alike ; for by 
this plan most or all must suffer sooner or later, some 
through being overgorged, others from starvation. 
But to the question of damping from drought at the roots. 
It is in this wise. Give light daily sprinklings, and what is 
the result ? The soil is wet where there are few or no roots 
to imbibe the moisture, while down below, where the most 
active roots are established, there is no moisture to imbibe. 
What follows ? Simply this, the plants will not die without 
a struggle, hence attempt to absorb through the stems what 
is denied them at the roots, and perish in their effort to pro¬ 
long life, damping off through the decay of the cuticle. This 
occurs the more quickly if water is given towards evening 
and the night temperature is very low, for dry roots and a 
cold moist atmosphere is a fatal combination. There are 
numbers of Primulas, Cinerarias, Pelargoniums, and other 
succulent-stemmed plants in jeopardy of destruction at this 
moment through the conditions indicated. The remedy is 
obviously to reverse those conditions. 
Plants in a growing state, no matter what they are, 
should no more be allowed to suffer from drought at the 
roots in winter than in summer. In nature plants and trees 
are not as dry as dust in winter, yet they do not damp off in 
well-drained soil from which water passes freely ; but they 
enjoy the counteracting influences of a free circulation of air 
that periodically conveys the moisture from the surface, 
leaving the earth moist below. Moisture there does no harm 
No. 336.— Yol. XIII., Third Series. 
No. 1992.— Yol. LXXV., Old Series. 
