October 22, 1885. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
369 
trees. A tree a year old, or one year’s training allowed to extend, will 
give the first year a breadth of at least 6 feet, and instead of having a few 
gross shoots to cut away in the autumn all are fruit-bearing wood well 
stndded with triple buds, and a fair crop insured the following season ; all 
danger of gummiDg is avoided, and a good-sized trellis may be covered in 
three or four years. Pruning is reduced to a minimum, disbudding being 
the most important matter in the after management of the trees. With 
due care not to overcrop, a Peach to every square foot of trellis covered 
with foliage being a good average crop, and quite as much as can be 
secured in a succession of years. The other main point is not to lay in 
too much wood ; two shoots to every foot will give abundance to select 
from, or one bearing and the other to take its place is all that should be 
laid in, preventing anything approaching crowding, diminishing the 
labour, and improving the quality of the wood from which the succeed¬ 
ing crop is to be gathered, as the main point in extension training is 
thorough exposure of the wood to light and air. 
Late Houses .—Trees in late and unheated houses will require a dry 
atmosphere, with a free circulation of air to harden the young growths. 
Eemove every shoot that will not be wanted next season, particularly the 
gross watery growths that are not likely to form flower buds. Old trees 
that carry good crops of fruit and receive annual attention to the roots 
in top-dressing, do not, as a rule, make too strong wood ; but vigorous 
young trees are not so readily kept within bounds, as they persist in 
making late growth. Where this is the case the strongest shoots should 
be pinched, and a trench be thrown out as deep as the roots at a distance 
from the base of the stem that will insure shortening the strongest roots. 
The trench should be left open for a fortnight or three weeks, and may 
then be filled in and the soil made firm. 
Cttcumbeks.— When the weather is wet and cloudy, the atmosphere 
surcharged with moisture, the plants require special treatment. Atmo¬ 
spheric moisture at such times must be reduced to a minimum, and air 
admitted very cautiously, otherwise mildew will be likely to attack the 
plants, which should, upon its first appearance, be dustid with flowers of 
sulphur, after which the house should be kept rather dry and airy until the 
disease disappears. _ In bright weather a more genial condition of the atmo¬ 
sphere must be maintained by damping occasionally, especially at closing 
time, but for the next three months a somewhat dry atmosphere should be 
maintained. Do not allow the fruits to remain on the plants a single day 
after they have attained a suitable size for the table. Placed on the stem end 
in saucers containing about an inch depth of water in a fruit-room, they 
will remain useable for several days. Thus relieved of the fruit, the sap 
will be diverted to swelling and finishing the younger and smaller fruits, 
which is a practice that ought always to be practised during the whole of 
the fruiting ^period of the plants. The night temperature should range 
from 65° to 70°, falling to 60° in the morning of cold nights, keeping at 
from 70° to 75° by day with fire, running up 10° or 15° with sun heat. 
Whatever ventilation is given should be in the early part of the day, 
never lowering the temperature, avoiding cold currents, and closing early, 
so as to husband the sun heat as much as possible. 
The linings of dung frames will now require to be attended to regularly 
by having them made up weekly or fortnightly, according to the necessity 
of the case, and the lights should be covered with double mats at night. 
Mildew and canker may be destroyed by the timely use of sulphur for 
the mildew, and quicklime well rubbed into the parts affected with 
canker. 
PLANT HOUSES. 
Tea Hoses .—Plants potted and treated as advised some time ago for 
producing blooms until Christmas should be placed in a suitable house at 
once. Many of them now possess a good number of small flower buds, 
while others have started freely into growth. If these are placed in a 
light house where a night temperature of 50° to 55° can be maintained, 
with a rise by day of 5° or 10°, the buds will soon commence opening, and 
during the autumn months will be highly esteemed. If there is any trace 
of aphides upon the plants when arranged in their winter quarters light 
fumigations with tobacco smoke will be needed. It not unfrequent ly 
happens that after the plants have been standing outside that small specks 
of mildew are visible on the young foliage. This must be destroyed by 
syringing with a solution of softsoap, 1 oz. dissolved in a gallon of water, 
to which one handful of sulphur has been added. If the Roses are well 
syringed with this solution and the sulphur allowed to remain upon them 
for a few days before being washed off all trace of mildew will disappear. 
Afterwards syringe in the morning only on fine days with the softsoap 
solution so frequently recommended. Supply water carefully, and all that 
were recently potted will need neither liquid or artificial manure. Plants 
with their pots full of roots may have weak stimulants. When admitting 
air every care must be taken that cold draughts do not strike upon them, 
or the young shoots and foliage will soon become affected by mildew. 
The house in which they are grown should be kept perfectly close and a 
little fire heat applied during cold bad weather. Young stock rooted from 
cuttings in spring, and now in 6 and 7-inch pots for supplying flowers at 
this season of the year, should be treated as advised for the others. 
The Rose Home .—In gardens where a house is devoted to Tea Roses 
for yielding flowers from Christmas onwards it is no position for the 
plants grown in pots for flowering up to that period. In this structure 
the Roses that furnish the central bed, the front, and rafters are planted 
out, and must still be kept perfectly cool by allowing the ventilators to 
remain open day and night for a few weeks longer. They should now be 
pruned. Cut out weak puny old wood that was laid in last year, and 
furnish the trellises again with the ripest and best wood that has been 
made during the year. Where the object is to obtain numbers of buds 
or cutting in preference to a limited number of large blooms do not 
practise a very close system of pruning. After the removal of the wood 
indicated only take off unripe ends. After the house has been thoroughly 
washed or paiuted tie the plants into position ready for starting, a little 
of the surface soil of the borders being removed and top-dress with 
equal portions of good loam and cow manure that have been stacked for 
some months. Previous to top-dressing the borders it is a good plan to 
scatter thinly over the surface of the border a few half and quarter-inch 
bones. If red spider, aphides, or mildew be present desiroy them before 
the borders are top-dressed. The soil should be kept rather dry until the 
bouse is closed for starting them into growth, when the whole of the soil 
about their roots must be thoroughly moistened with warm water. Plants 
subjected to this treatment will soon plump up their buds after the house 
is closed and break into growth without fire heat except in very cold 
weather. 
Hybrid Perpetuals. —Those established in pots may remain outside 
until the approach of frost, unless the weather is mild and it is necessary 
to prune and house them ready for starting early into growth. All late 
plants should remain outside for at least the next two months. Where it 
is necessary to increase the stock strong plants from the outside can be 
lifted and placed at once in well-drained pots. The pots used may be 
9 inches in diameler, but if the ordinary trade plants are purchased pots 
2 inches less will be large enough. Employ a mixture of fibry loam, one- 
seventh of decayed manure, one 6-inch potful of soot to each barrowful 
ofloam, and the same quantity of small bones. If the loam is of a heavy 
nature add to this a liberal dash of coarse sand. After potting plunge 
the plants so as to cover the rim of the pots, for if dry weather ensueB no 
water will be needed at their roots. The foliage must be preserved 
healthy as long as possible, and if this is done a large quantity of fresh 
roots will be formed before it is necessary to place them in cold frames. 
j# 
HE BEE-KEEPER. 
SPREADING BROOD. 
The refutation of the arguments adduced by the sup¬ 
porters of spreading brood has been undertaken by men so 
eminently well fitted, both by long practical experience and 
knowledge of the theoretical part of bee-keeping, that until 
a few weeks ago I had no intention of giving my views upon 
the subject, although to my mind the practice has been 
condemned most thoroughly, if strength of arguments against 
it were the only consideration. Before going further we had 
better fix in our minds the object we have in view, which 
object is, so say the advocates of spreading brood, best 
attained by this questionable method. For myself I always 
keep my object in view, and carefully working to obtain the 
result aimed at, generally, if not always, arrive at the desired 
goal. 
There cannot be a doubt that in the present day no man 
is able to hold his own without showing energy and perse¬ 
verance, and in addition thrift. It may be that some men 
make money while others lose it, and if the case is carefully 
inquired into the result often shows that the cause of the 
failure lies at the door of the man himself, and that he and 
he only is to blame for the unsatisfactory results which 
have accrued either by “ bad luck ” or some other dreadful 
calamity. It is so in bee-keeping—one man makes money, 
another loses it. But to the point. The object to be attained 
in spreading brood is, I take it, to bring a stock forward as 
quickly as possible, in order to be ready to take advantage of 
the earliest honey flow, or, if the owner prefers it, to increase 
by swarming. Granted that the man who spreads brood is 
able to bring about this most desirable object, and to have 
his stocks strong, healthy, and in good condition at the end 
of April or beginning of May, they are, it must be admitted, 
in a most satisfactory condition, but for all that it does not 
at all follow that the only way to accomplish this admirable 
result is by the adoption of this troublesome and, in the 
hands of any but experts, most dangerous practice. If a 
means simpler by far, inexpensive, taking much less time, 
and therefore entailing little or no extra expense, can be 
pointed out by which stocks can be brought up to the point 
at which they are ready to be supered or swarmed at the 
same early date by a plan so simple as to be managed by the 
merest tyro in apiculture, and in addition so safe a method 
as to entail no danger of chilled brood, lost queens, or any 
other of the many dangers to which the spreader of brood is 
constantly liable, the result will be that all can be desired. 
