86 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
November 15. 
well in the sixth row, being the next shade to the 
scarlet, and of them two more shades, the orange 
scarlet and dark scarlet, would finish the bed. 
D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Chrysanthemum Indicum. —The Chinese chrysan¬ 
themums have been cultivated for the best part of a 
century in this country, having been introduced be¬ 
tween 1760 and 1770. The generic, or family, name 
is composed of chrgsos, gold, and anthemon, a flower, 
as many of the first imported ones were yellow in 
colour, which is also the case with a considerable 
number of the hardier types of the genus.. Great 
improvements, however, have been effected since the 
plentiful introduction of hybridized varieties, though 
even some of the older kinds are very beautiful, either 
in the open air or grown against a wall. After being 
for years comparatively neglected they have for some 
time been receiving the attention they so richly de¬ 
serve. As autumn flowers, for herbaceous grounds, 
shrubberies, walls, and conservatories, they stand un¬ 
rivalled and alone; and, what is a great commenda¬ 
tion, they are so cheap, because so easily propagated, 
that they come within the reach of every possessor 
of a garden, however limited his means. I have 
known individuals who greatly prized certain plants, 
annually destroying that portion which they did not 
want for themselves, in order that, if possible, no one 
else should possess them : their chief enjoyment 
seeming to consist in their ability to say, “I have got 
such and such things which you neither have nor can 
obtain!” With all the benefits resulting from pro¬ 
vincial horticultural societies, they ha ve in some cases 
tended to promote such a narrow-minded, jealous 
feeling, at variance with that open-hearted and open- 
handed kind neighbourship which generally distin¬ 
guishes the artistes of the garden. Here all such narrow¬ 
minded folks must find themselves in a fix; the ease 
with which our present favourites are to be procured 
will make the contest, if contest there is to be, consist 
in superiority of culture, and not in the possession of 
novelties and rarities. Merely to keep the plants, 
nothing will require less trouble than chrysanthe¬ 
mums, but nothing will better repay careful atten¬ 
tion. In the one case, you may have diminutive 
flowers sticking at the points of slender, naked shoots; 
in the other, you will have large flowers upon shoots 
furnished with luxuriant foliage to the surface of the 
soil. 
At the present time the attending to the plants 
for the sake of the flowers is the principal thing, as 
now it is too late to rectify errors in their previous 
culture. If the drainage is all right, and the soil is 
lumpy and open, they will not only require plenty of 
water, but they will like it all the better if, after soot, 
or guano, or cowdung, has been soaked in it, you 
communicate it to the roots, so sparkling, frothing, 
and richly amber-coloured, that our good friends, the 
teetotallers, observing your operations, and mistak¬ 
ing your liquid for triple X ale, would chuckle, and, 
imagining the day was all their own, pat you kindly 
on the shoulder, and tell you the stuff at any rate was 
better for plants than for men, in which proposition, 
whatever be your peculiar views, you will, no doubt, 
heartily agree. 
We have in our time tried almost every method for 
growing these plants, in beds, in borders, and in pots, 
for the ornamenting of the greenhouse or window. 
For the latter purpose, we have taken some of the 
smaller plants of the previous year’s growth, furnished 
with a short stem free from suckers, as Mr. Beaton 
recommends for hardy shrubs, cut it down in March 
to the lowest buds, shook the earth from the roots, 
potted it afresh and successively until it filled a large 
pot, and made a noble specimen; or we have taken 
suckers, or, what we rather prefer, cuttings at the same 
period, and grown them on until they were as good 
as the other; and then, again, we have put a fresh 
lot of cuttings in in May, shifted them successively 
into smaller, and finally into six-inch pots, stopping 
them repeatedly, so as to make them bushy, but never 
after the beginning of July; and then, to obtain small 
plants, layered the points of the shoots of those grown 
in the open air, in small pots, in the beginning of Sep¬ 
tember, filled with light soil; not by tongueing beneath 
a joint in the usual way, as the shoot is very brittle 
and apt to break if much bent; nor yet by merely 
twisting the shoot, as by this process the roots are 
longer in being emitted; but by putting a sharp- 
pointed penknife through the centre of the shoot, and 
moving it upwards or downwards for a couple of 
inches, and then keeping the two sides separate by the 
insertion of a chip of wood in the centre of the open¬ 
ing, and then roots will form freely from the slit sides 
when covered with moist soil. By the first method, 
plants may be obtained from four to six feet in height; 
by the second, from eighteen inches to two feet; and 
by the third, from six inches to a foot. It is custom¬ 
ary to turn out the two first lots, as soon as they are 
struck, into beds prepared for them—much in the same 
way as Mr. Barnes would advise for pricking out young 
celery plants, only provided with more depth of soil, 
—where they are to be grown during the summer, 
watered, their roots cut, and transferred to pots in the 
autumn; but, though the system answers very well, I 
prefer keeping them in pots (if pots can be got) all 
the time, plunging them during the pot months, but 
preventing the roots getting out at the bottom, and 
setting them on a hard bottom full in the sun bv the 
middle of August, to ripen the wood and set the buds, 
never allowing them to flag for want of water. By 
having the three sizes of plants you will be enabled 
to make a more gorgeous display than by propagat¬ 
ing all at one time; and by arranging them in groups 
according to their size and colour the effect will be 
very striking. This season I have got none but those 
propagated in May, and though they arc well supplied 
with bud and flower, they will not possess the same 
massive effect as formerly. I generally use them now 
for filling large vases in a glass corridor, without arti¬ 
ficial heat. When well rooted the plants can be taken 
out of the pots without ever seeming to feel it; a row 
of small layered plants were placed round the out¬ 
side, inside of that a row from six-inch pots, the ball 
squeezed firmly together, and inside of that a large 
plant from an eight or twelve-inch pot. If there is 
not room for sinking such a plant, after planting the 
others in light rich soil we frequently set the pot on 
the surface, and, when covered with moss, it is con¬ 
cealed by the stems of the plants turned out, and by 
this means each vase used to exhibit a dense mass of 
bloom from the base to the summit of the plants, a 
result that cannot be effected with chrysanthemums 
by any other means that I am aware of. Those who 
have not vases may produce a similar effect by turn¬ 
ing several small plants into large pots; and one 
advantage will be that they will save watering to a 
considerable extent. Taste differs; we prefer filTng a 
vase or pot with one kind. 
'those who intend forming a collection cannot do 
