Si THE COTTAGE GARDENER. [November 7 . 
book th at I know of, the main points of it are only treated 
of in this letter. 
Teazle, or, more properly, teazel, belongs to a small 
group of genera, only six in number, and Scabious is one 
of them; Dipsacus fullonum being our Teazel plant, and 
the order is called after it Teazleworts. The wild Teazel 
of botanists, is not the Teazel of the planters and fullers, 
but an improved variety of it, which, although it will 
grow in any poor or waste land, 'grows strongest and 
pays best on bean soil,—that is, stiff loam with a dry 
bottom. A fresh piece of newly broken-up waste or 
common land, such as that from which Mr. Barnes gets 
his compost for the pine-apples at Bicton, would be the 
very thing to produce line Teazle heads ; much better, 
indeed, than old garden soil full of dead vegetable re¬ 
mains. On such new land it is not at all considered 
an exhausting crop,—probably, because it is of a very 
different nature from our ordinary crops—provided it is 
not planted on the same ground more than once in six 
or seven years; but it is a very bad crop to suck the laud 
poor, if used on old tillage and planted crop after crop. 
Like the cherry orchards in the west of England, the 
farmer or landlord often lets out a piece of land to 
cherry or teazel merchants for a single crop. 
The teazel ground is broken-up about this time, or 
before winter; and the deeper it is stirred at this time 
the better, if the surface is left rough for the frost to lay 
hold on. When the ground is dry in March, it is pointed 
over or ploughed, as the case may be, reduced to a tilth, 
and the seeds are sown any time in April, when the 
land is in a good state to work on. Like the manage¬ 
ment of turnips in England, the seeds are put in vari¬ 
ously ; but in drills is the best way, and about fifteen 
inches from drill to drill. Old people say an inch and 
a half for every month “ from seed to head,” making 
the rows just eighteen inches apart; from seed to head, 
on the average of seasons, being twelvemonths, or, in 
other words, from the time the seeds prove themselves by 
showing a full drill from end to end in the seed-leaf,— 
which rarely happens, owing to faulty seeds, bad sea¬ 
sons, and other causes—till the centre of the plant 
shows the head of the flower-stem, the Teazel being a 
biennial, or nearly so. The crop is ready in July, the 
second season after sowing the seeds. Any one who 
can manage a few drills of turnips might be trusted to 
look after the teazel crop : as soon as the plants are up, 
they require to be thinned to five or six inches apart, 
the ground well stirred, and as soon as the leaves meet 
a second thinning is given, and in some seasons a third 
thinning is necessary; and when the land is very good, 
the plants at the last thinning should stand twelve 
inches apart. A clever speculator, who rents high for 
bis crop, will have all the land spaded over twice the 
first season,-—that is, a good regular digging, and every 
weed kept down by hand and hoe; and if any blanks are 
to be made up, the plants for them will bear moving 
any time after harvest when the weather is showery. 
The extent of “ gapes," or failures, is considered before 
the final thinning, and a sufficient number of plants 
are left in the outside rows, or at the ends, to make up 
a full crop. By the end of October the land should 
look quite clean, and every row full from end to end, 
without any “pouch-mark” or“feeting”—that is, that 
no foot-marks made in wet weather should be seen. In 
the spring, the soil between the rows is stirred, and the 
plants are eartbed-up like beans, care being taken that 
neither the tops of the leaves nor the crowns of the 
plants be covered. Then, with the exception of keeping 
down weeds, no more is done to them till the flowers 
fade and have fallen, when the crop is ready to gather; 
but not in the usual way, like other crops, as they do 
not all come to maturity at the same time, some being 
fit to cut long before others. They are as prickly as 
field thistles, and must be bandied with strong pruning 
gloves on. The stems are cut nine or ten inches below 
the heads, and then laid into small bundles, and hung 
up on poles to dry under an open shed, as the rains 
would injure their bristly beards if they were exposed 
in the open air; but on fine sunny days you see them 
hanging out on poles. When they are perfectly dried, 
the next process is to sort them into good, better, and 
best sorts; and here the practised eye can tell at one 
look if the sorter has done his duty— kings, middlings, 
and scrubs being the usual trade names, according to 
quality;—9000 kings, or 20,000 middlings, go to make a : 
pack; and the scrubs are not much sought after, unless | 
a great scarcity of the others prevails; but being as pre- j 
carious a crop as the hops, the whole trade is a sort of | 
speculation after the same manner. A good hit in them ! 
is a most profitable speculation, and pays abundantly. [ 
Ten packs an acre is a good crop, but twelve packs j 
have been secured : and though that might not happen 
more than once in three or four years, still their cultiva¬ 
tion persevered in would pay well, as in the time of 
scarcity five, six, and seven pounds the pack have been 
given for them twenty years back; but what they may | 
fetch now, or whether they fetch anything, or are at all in | 
use, I cannot say, for until my friend put me in mind of 
them, I had forgotten all about them for the last fifteen 
years. 
The heads of Teazels have long bristly awns, or beards, 
like barley, which are finely teethed, or serrated, as we j 
gardeners call it; and every tooth, or serrature, is hooked, 
so that when the heads are arranged on a turn-about 
great drum, and the cloth is made to turn against them, 
the thousands of those little hooks catch hold of the 
finest fibres of the woollen web, leaving the cloth as 
shaggy as a goat, or a badly kept grass lawn ; then it is 
that mu- mowing machine, or, more properly, the clothier’s 
mowing, napping, or nipping machine, is set a-going to 
cut off all this shagginess down to a fine velvet-like svn - - 
face. What we call our mowing machine is nothing 
more than this very napping machine set differently by 
one of those clever clothiers, to suit our velvety carpets 
in every flower-garden. And now, late though it be to 
make the acknowledgment, if we, among other tilings, 
cause a stir about growing teazels all over the country, 
and so reduce the price of them for the clothiers, we 
should only be paying off a debt standing against us 
these twenty years past. Even if steel hooked wires, or 
cards, be again in use in place of teazels, we might raise 
teazels enough to put down all artificial substitutes, and 
so help ourselves as well as those who gave us the mow¬ 
ing macliines. At any rate, besides being sine enough 
myself of being well paid for this letter, I think I have 
shown a desire to repay my part of the obligation as a 
flower gardener, by giving or throwing out these hints, 
although some people might say, .unless the subject was 
as closely connected with the flower-garden as the roller 
and revolving knives of Mr. Budding’s machine, I should 
say notliing about it. 
New Plants : ColquJiounia Vestita. — It is very likely 
that, in a year' or two, this new plant will make a stir ! 
among such as ran after novelties. It came over from 
India after the battle of Sobraon,-with a high character, 
and very probably found its way to the nurseries from 
the Isle of Wight, where many plants of it were raised 
from seeds. Lord Hardinge sent.it to Sir W. Middleton, 
and I flowered it last year. It is not worth a bache¬ 
lor’s button for the flowers; but, as it will prove nearly 
hardy in the climate of London, and quite so in Devon- j 
shire, it will be an addition to the shrubbery, where it 
will come in as a relief to the dark green masses of foliage, 
having a whitish woolly appearance, like some kinds of 
Phlomis, to which it is very nearly related botanically. | 
The flowers are produced in whorls at the joints along | 
with the leaves, and are poor gaping-looking things, i 
neither orange nor red, but something between the two. 
I 
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