May 6,1887. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
359 
a few times to sweeten. A surfacing of this kind an inch thick 
every fortnight after the plants come into bearing will help them 
immensely, maintaining a good root action, and so enabling them to 
take most any amount of support. Plants that have been in bear¬ 
ing some time will be much benefited by having some of the sur¬ 
face soil, and at the sides of the bed removed without much injury 
to the roots, and frest compost supplied had in the house a few days 
to warm. If bright weather prevail shading will be necessary until 
the roots take to the fresh soil. 
Shading. —This will not be required before April, and the best 
means of affording it is by roller blinds. Scrim canvas is the best 
material, as it modifies without breaking the light to anything like 
the same extent as a closely woven material. Shading will only be 
required for a few hours before and after noon, and no more should 
be used than is necessary to insure the safety of the foliage. Per¬ 
manent shading is bad, and ought not to be resorted to, though 
there is an excuse for it on the non-ventilating system in the 
height of summer or such weather as sometimes prevails in July, 
but that will be alluded to on a future occasion. Judicious 
shading is a great aid to cultivation, but it should not be resorted 
to without necessity. It is particularly valuable in bright weather 
succeeding a dull period, so as to keep the foliage from flagging— 
the exhaustion of the plants from excessive evaporation. 
Plants in Hot-water-heated Pits. —Sometimes Cucumbers 
are grown in pits—the plants having the Vines trained over the sur¬ 
face of the bed—for winter use. It is not a desirable mode of 
cultivation at that time of year, but it is very common to train the 
plants that way for spring fruiting. The plants are pinched at the 
second rough leaf, and the growths arising are pinched at about the 
third leaf, and are afterwards trained over the surface of the bed, 
and pinched when about a foot from the sides of the pit. Such pits 
are very useful for early spring work, but the treatment being the 
same as those grown in pits and frames heated by fermenting 
materials more extended cultural directions are deferred.—G. 
Abbey. 
(To be continued.) 
ROSE-GROWING FOR BEGINNERS. 
(Continued from page 334.) 
ROSES IN POTS. 
There is no doubt that these are better on their own roots; 
and if one be gifted with the patience of Job, it is probable that 
his patience will in due time be rewarded ; but in these high-pressure 
days, when everybody lives, metaphorically speaking, at the rate of 
forty miles an hour, we cannot afford to wait; our wants must be 
supplied, and the only course to adopt is to procure budded or 
grafted plants. Of these two kinds I most certainly recommend 
the first-named. My reasons, which I think are strong enough to 
convince the greatest sceptic, are to be found in the articfe on 
Grafting. At any rate, the beginner who is in a hurry and wants 
to start at once, had better have some budded or grafted plants 
to begin with, for if he goes in for those on their own roots he will 
find them so small that they will require to be grown on for twelve 
months before they will be worth anything. Even then he can 
only get the older varieties, for while it is an easy matter to procure 
grafted plants of any new or recently introduced kind, it will be 
quite impossible to get them on their own roots. The reason is not 
far to seek. A cutting to make an own-root plant can hardly be 
made with less than two buds on it, while these two buds used for 
grafting would at once produce two plants, and the two plants 
grown on and cut up for grafting again could be almost indefinitely- 
reproduced, while the solitary cutting was making its slow progress 
towards rooting and becoming a plant. The only way to get our 
plants on their own roots, I mean those of recent introduction, is 
to grow them ourselves, and have patience—in the meantime, as I 
said before, growing such plants as we can procure. 
Five-sixths of the Roses in pots sold throughout the country are 
(p-afted plants ; in fact it is not easy to get budded plants estab¬ 
lished in pots ; the fatal facilities for grafting prevent this. Budding 
can only' be done when the stocks are in a free-growing state, and 
except they are forced under glass this will only be during summer. 
If, then, a nurseryman bud Roses on stocks in pots, in June let us 
say. the inserted buds remain dormant until the next spring, and it 
will be summer again before the plants are nicely grown. Here are 
twelve months occupied in the growing of the same plants, which 
science misapplied can produce in six weeks ! Here is the room 
they occupy taken up for twelve months ; and even beyond that, 
twelve months’ attention is required. Even where the legitimate 
methods of grafting are adopted, good plants are grown, sold, and 
delivered, all within a period of three months. 
I do not suppose that these remarks, to the disparagement of 
grafted plants, will please all. I have paid for my experience, 
which has been very considerable, and my advice to the beginner is 
to have budded plants if possible. If he can afford to wait a little,, 
the cheapest way to get together a stock of these is to buy in the 
autumn a lot of nice plants from the open ground and pot them 
up, plunging them outside ; if they are Tea Roses they would be 
better in cold frames. For the first year let them be treated as 
outdoor plants; during the season they will give some blooms, and 
if properly pruned and attended to they will be nice plants in 
twelve months. Even in the first spring after potting as advised, 
these plants—if placed in a cool house so that their young growths 
will be protected from frost—may be pruned early, and grown in 
this way they will grow and bloom well, but it would not be 
advisable or safe to subject plants like these to any heat whatever— 
that is, excepting sun heat ; it being a fact which cannot be too 
well known, that Roses, to be grown successfully in heat, must 
have their pots full of roots, or, in other words, the plants must be- 
thoroughly established. There is just one other thing to be con¬ 
sidered in potting plants which Lave been grown in the open 
ground, and that is this, that the growth of such plants is much, 
more vigorous and the shoots much thicker than those of the same 
varieties grown in pots from the first. The thickness- of these 
shoots may not be a drawback in all cases, but where we propose to 
bend or tie down the branches of pot plants for the purpose of 
training them, or getting the buds to break evenly, we shall find 
the finer growths and thinner shoots which original pot plants- 
produce much easier to manage. 
Now I will suppose that the beginner has not much time to- 
spare in the training and growing of his pot Roses, and that he will 
be glad to hear of a rough and ready way of growing them. He 
starts, we will suppose, with a plant from the open ground, and he 
pots it. But here we must pause to say a few words on potting. 
Open-ground Roses for this purpose should be procured with as 
many wiry or fibrous roots as possible, and such roots should not be 
cut off. A pot should be selected that will hold them all, and in- 
potting them the best way to get them in is to turn the plant round 
and round in the pot, so that when the operation is finished the roots 
will be coiled round the sides. Plants -worked on the seedling Briar 
will be found, I think, to have the greatest quantity of suitable 
roots for pot work. If the plants have only thick bare roots with 
very little fibre about them, they must be cut right back, and in 
course of time they will emit fibrous roots from the cut parts ; but 
where the roots have to be mutilated in this way, the plants cannot 
be expected to do so well the first season as those which are provided 
with fibrous roots. 'Where we propose to pot up plants which are 
growing in our own garden, this should be done while the leaves are 
still green, after which, if possible, they should be placed in a cold 
house where the sun does not penetrate, and which house should be 
kept closed, and the plants syringed two or three times a day. 
Under such treatment, providing the operation be done quickly 
and well, the plants will keep their leaves and suffer very little 
check indeed. But if we have no conveniences of this kind, the 
plants may be quickly potted, the pots plunged anywhere out of 
the sun, and they will take no harm. Even if we propose to buy- 
in plants for potting, I think it would be advisable to get them 
about the middle of October. Plants taken up so early as this in 
the season, as a rule come to hand very much shrivelled and with 
withered leaves. Under these circumstances the best plan to adopt 
is to dig a trench and bury the whole lot, root and branch, for 
about a week, taking care they get well watered. At the end of 
this time they may be disinterred, when they will be found very- 
much the better for their temporary burial, and they should then, 
be potted. 
Hybrid Perpetuals require a good stiff soil to grow in, either in 
or out of pots. For pot work the foundation of the soil should 
consist of old sods or turves cut from a clay pasture, with old horse 
or cow manure added, but here is the prescription 
One barrowful old sods and good loam, 
Half barrowful old cow manure, 
One-eighth barrowful leaf mould, 
One-eighth barrowful sand or charcoal (the latter preferred). 
The pots must be well drained, and the larger sizes should have 
a correspondingly greater quantity of crocks in the bottom. A 
handful of bones broken small will add considerably to the vigour 
of the plant in due time. Above these should come some of the 
larger pieces of turf to prevent the finer soil from washing down 
and choking the drainage. On the top of the coarser lumps place 
some of the finer soil—none of this should be put through a sieve, 
but simply chopped and broken up roughly. Then place the plant 
in position, keeping the roots as near the surface as possible. Roots 
can always be got to grow downwards, not often upwards. In pot 
work it is not absolutely necessary that the junction of scion and 
stock should be below the surface. It is advisable, however, as it 
gives the plant a chance of getting to some extent on its own roots. 
