254 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
All that can be clone with the mildew on very tender 
little plants in winter, is merely to keep it under by 
dusting sulphur over the affected parts; it cannot he 
wholly 0 eradicated. As soon, therefore, as a pot of 
cuttings is insured from such plants as are affected 
by mildew, or any other disease, the old affected 
plants are thrown away at once; and I would always 
advise this course to amateurs, who can command a 
common hot-bed, even as late as the middle or end of 
March, if they cannot get up one earlier ; as, besides 
the trouble and unsightliness of diseased plants, 
many of these diseases—and particularly the mildew 
—are likely to take a firm footing in the place, and be¬ 
come troublesome in after years, if allowed to remain 
long in a pit or house. 
In making early spring cuttings of verbenas, anagal- 
lises—or, indeed, of all the soft-wooded bedding 
plants, if the old plants have been previously forced 
a little to make a fresh growth from which the cut¬ 
tings are made—it is not necessary to cut them below 
a joint, as we recommend for other plants. II the 
shoot is cut half-way between two joints, it will be 
right enough; and, by this mode oi cutting, a very 
scarce sort may be multiplied much faster than by 
cutting under a joint, as by saving this bottom joint 
it will throw up two more cuttings in a few days, 
under a smart heat. If a liot-bed is in good working 
order for cuttings of this sort—or, say, with a brisk 
bottom-heat of full 90°, and from 70° to 80° of top 
heat—from four to five days is the usual time in which 
the softer plants will strike roots; but we often see a 
small pot of very young tops of verbenas strike roots 
in fifty hours; but if we take a week as a general 
average for cuttings to root—from tlie middle of Feb¬ 
ruary to the end of April—we shall not be far from 
the mark. So that, if we have but very few cuttings 
of a particular sort to begin with, we may so manage 
as to have the required stock of it in six weeks. 
One of the worst plants to keep over the winter 
for the flower garden, is the Double FrenchMangold ; 
and there is no way of getting a bed of this in per¬ 
fection, without saving the particular variety you 
want to bed-out for spring cuttings. Cuttings of the 
finest double yellow variety of this marigold I have 
made about the end of August, for many years; and 
before I hit on the right way of managing them, I 
have known the stock reduced, before the end of 
February, to three plants; and from these hardly half- 
a-dozen cuttings could be procured. Indeed, 1 recol¬ 
lect one spring, the propagator reporting that he could 
only get a single cutting to begin with; and that very 
season we had two good-sized beds marked for this 
plant, each of which required eighty plants to fill it 
well at once. But, fortunately, this plant may be in¬ 
creased in the spring from cuttings much faster than 
a verbena; and cuttings of it struck as late as the 
10th of May, will be ready to plant out of doors by 
the 1st of June. All this we had to prove that sea¬ 
son ; for, from the one cutting 100 plants were made 
and planted at the proper time. Many people de¬ 
spise the name of a marigold bed, but I never heard 
any one say aught but praise of a bed of them made 
from cuttings. The plants are more dwarf and bushy 
from cuttings; and in the event of a clear yellow bed 
of this plant being required for a particular arrange¬ 
ment, there is no other way of supplying the diside- 
ratum but by cuttings ; and when a striking variety 
of marigold is seen in a bed of seedlings, there is no 
way of perpetuating it, except by cuttings. 1 have 
seen excellent beds of brown coloured and striped 
flowers made from cuttings of these marigolds, but I 
only keep tbe clear double yellow this way. 
[February 7- 
I recollect an interesting experiment, which was 
suggested to me once by a gardener, who always kept 
his supply of double marigolds from cuttings; it 
was to ascertain if it were possible to stamp a perma¬ 
nency on a given variety, by a long course of keeping 
it by cuttings; but, I believe, it can hardly be done 
with this flower. Between us, we kept one variety 
without a break for eleven years, from cuttings taken 
in succession during that time, and then saving seeds 
from it; but the seeds did not produce more double 
flowering plants at the end of the eleventh year than 
they did when the parent stock was only three or 
four years of age. 
Fuchsias. —When a supply of fuchsias is to be 
made in the spring, the cuttings should be put in 
among the very first that are made, in order to get 
good bushy plants of them before they begin to 
flower. Any one who is fond of a fuchsia bed, or 
hedge, in a flower garden, should use but one sort in 
a place. I have tried all the combinations that 1 
could make out of a great many sorts—using, at dif¬ 
ferent times, from two to twenty kinds in a bed—but 
I never got a bed of mixed fuchsias yet that pleased 
me, or that any lady, who understood the subject, ad¬ 
mired. There are some who will admire anything 
gaudy in flower beds; but that taste is fast wearing 
out, and particularly in regard to fuchsia beds. Of 
all the old fuchsias, the one called Gracilis is the best 
fora large mass, or for a low hedge, and to be cut down 
to the ground every year; but, for a permanent hedge, 
where they will stand the winter, Ricartonii is the 
best, because it is much stronger, and more hardy, 
than Gracilis. There are many instances of the 
Fuchsia Ricartonii growing into huge bushes, of from 
ten to fifteen feet high; and I heard lately of a hedge 
of it in the north of Ireland, eight or nine feet high, 
and as many feet through. But, in my opinion, the 
one called Carolina is by far the best of all the 
fuchsias for a bed, or a hedge, or for single specimens, 
out of doors; and for this, among other reasons, that 
it is just a second edition of the original Fuchsia 
coccinea, with all the parts four times enlarged, and 
with the most powerful habit of that race of fuchsias, 
or those belonging to the Coccinea breed. 
To make the best show in a bed, this Carolina ought 
to be propagated every year, in August, and from 
stout pieces of the young stems stuck in light soil, 
behind a wall or hedge. When it is more than two 
years old, it is too strong for ordinary beds; and 
nothing looks more out of character than a very tall 
crop in a small bed. Therefore a succession of young 
plants should thus be kept up. Hedges of fuchsias, 
When planted in suitable situations, are extremely 
beautiful—much more so when they are cut down to 
the grouud every year, and thus made to flower on very 
vigorous young wood; and Carolina, treated that way, 
must be gorgeous indeed. 
There is a climbing fuchsia ( Radicans , a wild spe¬ 
cies), which would grow twenty or thirty feet long in 
a few seasons; but it is a shy one to flower. A first, 
or second, cross between it and Carolina ought to 
produce a giant fuchsia for standards. Such a cross 
lias been obtained, but not skillfully, and it is of little 
use. The pollen of Carolina should only be used, and 
the cross repeated, until nothing but the constitution 
of radicans, or female parent, is left to the offspring. 
Dahlias. —Any scarce variety of this flower should 
now be in heat, to produce a good stock from. People 
who have not seen this useful plant propagated on a 
large scale, would hardly believe how many plants 
can be got from a strong root by beginning early with 
them. The great growers count them by the hundred 
