22 4 , 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
fJ une, 
rienced hands each year, the loss from which is 
rarely sufficiently estimated. 
A difficulty with the florist at the beginning 
is, that the business is usually too small to afford 
the expense of a horse and wagon, which atsqme 
seasons is indispensable; but when he combines 
his business with that of market gardening 
the teams necessary for that can be used 
for the occasional requirements of the 
greenhouse with little or no detriment. 
In many other respects one business can 
be made to serve the other. Under 
the tables or benches of the green¬ 
house on which the flowers are grown 
is a capital place for forcing rhubarb, 
an article everywhere commanding a 
ready sale at a high price. It requires 
but little knowledge or labor to pro¬ 
duce this crop under the greenhouse 
benches. All that is necessary to do is 
to pack the large crowns or clumps of 
rhubarb as closely together as they will 
go, filling in the interstices with any 
good soil, beginning say the first week 
in January, February, and March to 
give a succession of crops. The roots 
should have been previously dug up 
and kept in some cool shed or cellar 
or in the open ground, provided they 
are so protected from frost that they 
can be dug up at any time in win¬ 
ter. Asparagus roots may be treated 
in the same way, but it is necessary 
that the asparagus and rhubarb roots 
should be of good size, such as when 
growing in the open ground would 
give strong and healthy shoots. Young 
or small plants of either would not 
answer. Mushrooms may also be grown 
under the benches of the greenhouse, 
the beds being prepared in the usual 
way; but the crop of these in inex¬ 
perienced hands would not be likely to 
be so successful, nor would the sale, 
unless in very large cities, be so cer¬ 
tain. The greenhouse too, as we have 
before stated in your columns, is quite 
as safe a place in which to raise all 
kinds of plants in use in the market 
garden as either the hot-bed or cold-frame. It 
can be easily made to serve this purpose if the 
demand for flowers is not yet enough to re¬ 
quire the whole space. Vegetable plants can 
be raised with greater safety and with less care 
than is necessary in raising them in hot-beds or 
in frames, while the work is far more agreeable. 
Three Crops in One Year. 
S. C. wrote last December from Lexington, 
S. C., in the most enthusiastic manner respect¬ 
ing the great advantages offered by the climate 
of his state, and gives the following account 
of one of his experiments: 
The first w T eek in January last, I planted a 
small plot of ground in my garden with garden 
peas, which were ready for the table the 1st 
of May, and cleared away 20th of June, when 
I manured and turned under the same, plant¬ 
ing northern corn in drills. The corn yielded 
splendidly, was matured, and cut the first week 
in September, with the beans which I planted 
in hills between the corn-rows, and also yielded 
well. On the 5th of Sept., I again covered it 
with manure and plowed under, wdien I sowed 
turnips in the drill. The turnips are still 
growing finely, and are now ready for the table. 
I have now sown barley in drills between the 
turnip rows, which will be ripe by the middle 
of next June, when a crop of cow-peas or 
other variety of beans may be grown, to be 
followed by turnips again, or a similar crop. 
The ground on which this experiment has 
been made has been in cultivation thirty-five 
years, and is better to-day than ever before, 
and I think there is little danger of over-crop- 
ping if a sufficiency of plant food is furnished 
to meet the wants of each successive crop. 
This is but a single experiment, but it may be 
successfully repeated every year, for this has 
not been the most favorable season for farm¬ 
ing, and I cordially invite my northern friends 
to come and see for themselves. But few per¬ 
sons, even among those who have cultivated 
all their lives, have any idea what a good soil 
properly managed is capable of producing. 
Primula Japonica—" Queen of Primroses.” 
The Japan Primrose we are obliged to re¬ 
gard as one of the greatest of recent horticul¬ 
tural humbugs—or rather let us say, not the 
plant, but the manner in which it was Intro¬ 
duced. The plant taken upon its own merits 
is well enough, and a desirable addition to our 
hardy species, should it prove hardy, as we do 
not doubt it will. It is only when we compare 
the plant as it really is with the representations 
made of it both in descriptions and engravings 
in foreign journals and catalogues, that we are 
obliged to regard it as a fraud. An English 
journal goes on in this way: “ Hail ! Queen of 
the Primroses! for so its introducer designates 
the lovely flow r er we now figure, which is as 
hardy as a peasant and as resplendent as a prin¬ 
cess,” which as a “ gush ” is about equal to any¬ 
thing to be found "under “ agriculture ” in a New 
York weekly paper. Then we have in another 
journal with a picture to match, “A Primula 
a foot and a half high, bearing four or five se¬ 
parate whorls of flowers, each an inch in diame¬ 
ter, and of a splendid magenta color, and 
the plant moreover perfectly hardy— 
can anything be added to this to indicate 
its value?” To this last conundrum 
we can say yes—tell the truth about it, 
and say that while there are four or five 
whorls of flowers, they do not all open 
at the same time, and that the plant is 
about one fourth as floriferous as the 
pictures show, and as this description 
would imply. Our florists, with this as 
they do with other new things, have 
copied the foreign descriptions and en¬ 
gravings, and are not to be charged with 
misrepresenting a plant they had not 
yet had an opportunity of flowering. 
Last year English cultivators were 
bringing it into flower, and complaints 
began to appear in their horticultural 
journals that the plant was not like 
the pictures, and though the question 
was often asked if it had ever been 
known to produce more than one whorl 
of flowers at a time, we do not recol¬ 
lect to have seen an affirmative answer. 
We have inquired among those of 
our friends who flow r ered the Primrose 
last year, and their experience with our 
own this spring, with plants direct from 
Japan and from one of the best floral 
establishments in the country, make us 
conclude that if two or more whorls of 
dowers ever do open at once it is an un¬ 
usual occurrence, and not the general 
habit of the plant. In our own plants 
by the time the first (lowest) whorl has 
faded, the flowers upon that next above 
are just beginning to open, and the 
seed vessels begin to enlarge so rapidly 
that if one did not wish seeds it would 
be best to remove them, as they de¬ 
tract from the beauty of the flowers on 
the whorl above. The engraving gives a rep¬ 
resentation of our best plant, which to insure 
exactness and leave nothing to the imagination 
of the artist, was drawn with a camera lucida, 
which gives even more accuracy than a photo¬ 
graph. We do not know that any one has yet 
tried the Japan Primrose as an open border 
plant, but it is quite hardy in England, and as 
it has been kept until midwinter in a cold 
frame, we do not doubt that it will prove com¬ 
pletely hardy. To sum up, this plant has been 
much over-praised, and been put upon the mar¬ 
ket at a high price with descriptions which to 
say the least were highly colored, it would be 
hardly polite to add with respect to distin¬ 
guished horticulturists, “ the same with intent 
to deceive,” for we can understand that a florist 
if lie be a F. H. S., or even writes an L. 
S. after his name, can look at a plant with 
double extra glorifying spectacles, especially if 
said plant is to bring him £1 Is. (the only fash¬ 
ionable price, which is quite different from the 
vulgar £1) a specimen. It is, however, a pretty 
plant, and when it finds its place in the border 
with other spring bloomers it will no doubt be 
quite popular. It is no more entitled to be 
called “ Queen of Primroses ” than P. Cortu- 
soidcs and others, and as for a plant to force 
there is no need of it while we have our fine 
varieties of Chinese Primroses. 
the japan primrose.—( Primula Japonica .) 
