THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
83 
I November 7.] 
Planting. —All will now be ready for planting, and, as 
I already stated, we would plant one plant at the foot of 
each upright rod, and train it perpendicularly, confining 
i it entirely to the one wire. Of course, the sooner the 
j plants are in the better, but, if the period is much 
j advanced, as to autumn planting, and Christmas is at 
j hand, wo would defer the planting until the early part 
of February, when the sooner they are in the better. 
As to pruning, the currant, under such circumstances, 
i should not be allowed to retain above seven or eight 
| inches of young wood as leading shoots at each winter’s 
pruning; for they must be compelled to develop every 
eye or bud up the stem as they advance; as the base 
of such development forms the nucleus of a complete 
bunch of spurs of a fruitful character ; and which 
spurs, with a proper system of summer pruning or 
stopping, will remain permanent for several years ; and 
thus this single stem will become a continuous line of 
spurs, and of course be clothed with currants front bottom 
to top. 
About other pruning matters, more will be said in due 
time; we must now suppose that the trellis is duly estab¬ 
lished, and that some protection, as suggested for the 
gooseberry, is necessary. We are not aware that any 
necessity exists for adopting any variation as to the cur¬ 
rant, for precisely the same arrangement as for the 
gooseberry will suit very well. The spout from which 
the canvass curtain hangs, and along the edge of which 
it may slide with rings, after the manner of a bed-curtain, 
must be wide enough in the case of the currant to 
throw the curtain at least six inches from the training 
wires; for it must be remembered that the currant will 
make much breast-wood during the summer, and although 
such must be put under a course of stopping betimes, 
yet, still as the leaves from tho base of such breast- 
wood perform the all-important office of catering for the 
fruit, three or four inches must be left on until the fruit 
is nearly ripe. 
The red currant ordinarily grows much taller than 
the white, and, we may add,much stronger; indeed,it is 
sometimes apt to be unfruitful through sheer grossness, 
and in such cases must, without hesitation, be root- 
pruned; of this, however, more in its proper place. 
The soil, then, for the white currant should be of a more 
geueious character than for the red. If the two are to 
be planted together on the same trellis, it would be well 
perhaps to plant them alternately; making the white 
occupy the lower portion, and the red the upper. In 
such case the red should be trained with a naked stem 
for half a yard or so, and thus make way for tho white 
below. By such an arrangement the upright rods need 
not be more than nine inches apart. 
And now for the expense per yard lineal. The wire 
may be purchased for about eight shillings per cwt. 
The oak posts at about one shilling each; the larch 
I posts at about sixpence each; the staples at about one 
; shilling per hundred. As for the labour involved, that 
j is a trifling item; and will generally be performed by a 
labourer already employed. Canvass, of capital quality, 
; niay be obtained for about sixpence per square yard. 
The abovo are extracts from genuino accounts now lying 
| on our table, of work really performed. This fence is 
j termed “ strained wire fencing,” and is being used ex¬ 
tensively in these parts for common enclosures, and for 
the division of fields, chiefly in cow pasturage. 
We had almost forgotten to name the strength of the 
| rods or wire. The three horizontal rods for the currants 
; may be about half an inch diameter ; but for the per- 
j pendicular wires, about No. 1 or 2 on the regular 
metallic wire gauge will do very well. 
R. Errington. 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
I oive public notice—as the town-crier says, when he 
has anything particular to announce—that I cannot go 
out to tea parties this winter, nor see company at home 
after dusk. I petitioned the editor, as earnestly as I 
could, to let me oft'from this Cottage Gardener for the 
six winter months; now that flower gardening is over for 
the season. “ No ! not for six weeks, ” was all the com¬ 
fort I received. Formerly 1 could amuse myself, and 
while away two evenings in the week writingthese weekly 
letters, and the other four evenings I coidd devote to 
whatever chanced to come in the way; but now, what 
with letters and making dictionaries, I am obliged to 
“ give notice" as above; and tho more so just now, as I 
was sadly teased the other evening by an honest man 
who called in and kept me from my books, till all the 
rest of the honest people in the parish were gone to bed, 
when I had to strap to it just as if the tea-things had 
only then been cleared away off the table. As soon as I 
could get rid of tho fidgets I was in all the evening, I 
determined on making the subject of his visit my article 
! for The Cottage Gardener, and here it is :—“ Do you, 
or any of tho writers for The Cottage Gardener,” 
says he, “ happen to know anything of teasing ?” 
“ Happen to know anything about what?” replied I, 
seeing he was in earnest. “ Why I have been pleasing 
and teasing, by turns, ever since I took to public writing ; 
but what do you mean? ” “ Oh ! I don’t want the in¬ 
formation for myself,” he said; “but I was over last 
week at-, and my brother-in-law, George, wanted 
my advice about a piece of waste land which he says 
must be added to his holding, owing to ‘ the line ’ having 
crossed it, and he was advised to break it up and plant 
it with teasing.” “ Well,” I rejoined, “ you do puzzle 
me now—I have heard of many odd things and ways in 
my time, but this way about your brother-in-law, George, 
with his bit of waste land crossing tho line, staggers me! 
I have crossed ‘the line’ myself more oft than any 
captain in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, but upon my 
word your teasing is far beyond all the ‘ lines ’ I ever 
yet heard of.” “No, but it don’t!” was his reply; 
“ they say it pays so well.” “ What pays ? ” “ Teasing, 
I tell you! ” “ What on earth is teasing V' “ What they 
use to raise the nap on cloth.” “Oh! he meant Teazels.” 
“ Well, I suppose it is all the same thing ; but you 
gardeners have new names for everything, new and old, 
that grows ; but if you know anything about it tell me, 
as I told George you writers in The Cottage Gardener 
knew everything; everybody says so.” He was so im¬ 
portunate, and said the thing was of so much value, that 
it was of little use to tell him that we gardeners never 
heard of any person in our lives who knew everything, 
but one, and he made a sad mess of it; for the very first 
time he was sent to do something in the kitchen-garden 
he pulled up a bed of artichokes, and afterwards declared, 
he never met with such strong thistles before; but sup¬ 
posed the climate made all the difference ! Now, if he 
had pulled up a bed of Teazels in a mistake for thistles, 
he might have saved his credit, notwithstanding that a 
good crop of them has been known to be worth anore 
money than the laud which produced it. But if it is 
really true, as my teaser affirmed, that these Teazels are 
really of such use, or of any use in these days, for raising 
nap or lowering it, all of us should know something 
more about them ; and to put it to the test, let me say a 
few words about their history, use, and cultivation, first 
premising that though I never made cider on the one 
hand, or planted Teazels on the other, I have seen, for 
more than ten years, how both were conducted by the 
best farmers in the West of England, and with my books 
of reference if I cannot write a short chapter on either 
branches, it is not for want of materials. N evertheless, as 
the subject has never been handled in any gardening 
