I 
March 2 . 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
419 
and all stages of propagation, we are acting artificially, 
and contrary to the course of nature in every way, and 
in none more wide than in the matter ot heat both for 
the bottom and top degrees. The centre of a new 
dung bed is the hottest, and the sides of an old one, 
which is kept, on by hot linings on the outside. One 
seldom gets the right degree of hoat from these beds 
longer than a few days at a time, but that is no great 
harm; from 85° to 1)5° is what I used to prefer at six 
inches below the surface. A layer of tan is the best 
thing to put over a cutting-bed, for plunging the pots 
in, or for keeping down bad smells; sand is the next 
best; leaf-mould the next best, but it is very liable 
to be over-run by worms; an old mushroom-bed broken- 
up, and the small parts kept for surfacing, is a very 
i good substitute for these things. I have used sand for 
; many years exclusively for this work, and, when it is to 
be had at band, I would take it before anything I ever 
saw tried. Our correspondent, in the turf-district, would 
find sifted turf, kept a little damp, the best possiblo 
thing for the surface of a cutting-bed. When the heat 
is uniform, from 75° to 85°, few cuttings begin to grow 
before they are rooted; and seeing them make a start 
is the index to their rooting; but, with a higher degree, 
many cuttings would seem to grow without making 
a single root 
When cuttings are put in early in the spring, and a 
large supply of plants is wanted from a small stock of 
any given plant, it is not an economical way to remove 
cuttings as soon as they are rooted, or to have them 
potted into larger or smaller pots; it is better to allow 
them to stand as they are, and as soon as they have 
made a growth sufficient to make another lot of cuttings 
to cut them all down to one joint from the surface of 
the pot, still leaving the pots in the bed till another 
growth comes up a little, then to remove the pots to a 
more airy place for a week or ten days before the struck 
plants are repotted; however, when one is at a pinch 
for any particular plant or kind, I see no fear in leaving 
the first pot in the cutting frame until three or more 
crops of cuttings are got from the original ones ; this I 
have done with a thousand pots in my day. I once ran 
out of a blue Anagallis altogether, and had to send two 
hundred miles for a few cuttings in February; I got 
only seven little cuttings in a box by post, and from 
those seven I got some hundreds of plants by a fresh 
crop from every pot of them as fast as they rooted, and 
not a pot was moved out of the hottest part of the bed 
till near the end of April, and I forget how many crops 
I took from the first pot; but there was a fresh crop 
every eight or nine days. 
I never could find room to pot-oft rooted cuttings into 
single pots before the middle of April, and if I had, 1 
very much doubt tbe use of it. The safest way, and the 
less trouble, is, after they are a week or so out ot the 
cutting-bed to shake them out of the first pot, and put 
four or six of them in the same sized pots with a richer 
compost, two-thirds leaf-mould, or any light rich stuff, 
and one-third of sand and peat, or all sand if peat is 
scarce, and to plunge the pots in heat for another week; 
after that to remove them to a cooler bed with more air, 
or what we call the nursing bed ; and after a while to 
divide them again and pot them singly, or, what is 
better, to plant them in rows across a bed made on 
purpose for that stage of the work; but, of course, all 
that is not to be looked for in limited places, but the 
principle can be kept in view, and applied according to 
means. In the nurseries, it is best to have every plant 
in a separate pot as soon as it is rooted, for the market; 
but in private and small establishments there is a 
world of trouble in watering so many little pots, even if 
there was sufficient room for them; and to put a little 
newly-rooted plant of this class into a large pot would 
be the same as trying to kill it by inehes. 
PELARGONIUM CUTTINGS. 
It is never a good plan to make cuttings of green- 
houso Pelargoniums (Geraniums, as they are usually 
called) in the spring, but one is often tempted to do so, 
now and then, with a new or very scarce kind, and then 
only tho top of a shoot, here or there, where they came 
too thick for training properly. There is no goneral rule 
for such cuttings as to length; any length that you can 
fix firm in the cutting-pot, with a little top above the sand, j 
will do up to four inches; but suppose 1 had a real new 
and very dear plant, with three shoots to it, just now, I ; 
could not expect to make any impression with it next May j 
or June by the flowers, but I might make lots of plauts 
from it, and see the flowers also at the right time, then j 
I would go to work on this wise; I would leave the 
strongest shoot to flower, and I would take two as short 
cuttings as I could manage from the other two, put 
each of them in a thumb-pot with a little loam, leaf- 
mould, and sand; strike them like Verbenas, keep them 
in the hotbed after they were rooted, and potted into a 
3-inch pot till they were five or six inches high, then 
whip off the tops and make two more cuttings in the 
same way, and so on till the end of next May, and all 
this time I would use every bit of new growth which 
appeared on the original two shoots on the first plant, and 
by the beginning of May I would even stump down these 
two shoots for final cuttings, and after the plant flowered 
I would cut down that shoot also, and being the 
strongest, it will be as forward next autumn as the 
other two which were cut a month or six weeks earlier. 
All this is not to be recommended as good practice; far 
from it; but it is wonderful what one can do, even in a 
small way, with a new plant. These spring cuttings 
ought to be planted out-of-doors early in June, and to 
be taken up and potted by the end of July, and they 
would come in bumpers next year. 
Bedding Geraniums. —Many of them can only be 
propagated to advantage in the spring, and four inches 
is the best length for tho cuttings, and the cuttings to 
be put in half-an-inch deep, the same light compost as 
for other soft-wooded plants will do equally well lor all 
bedding Geraniums, without a single exception. The 
Golden Chain is yet the scarcest of them, and every inch 
of it will strike now as freely as a Verbena; the little 
shoots may look now as brown and seem as firm as 
horns, yet these will root with no trouble, and no 
matter how short they may be, the plant will do all 
the better if they are all cut close in, say to an inch 
of the older stem. After this cutting-in, let the old 
plants be kept rather dry for six weeks, and they will 
break out again, and do all the better for it; and 
none of these should ever be kept in pots all the sum¬ 
mer. Touchstone, a bright scarlet flower, is the next 
scarcest, and one of the best bedders; a very strong 
grower, that is not worth a straw if not propagated in 
spring; summer cuttings of it from the flowering wood, 
in summer, will never make a bushy plant, as such 
plants will soon get bare and look bad; they are also 
not nearly so easy to keep in winter. Lady Mary Fox, 
as good in every respect, and as bad in all details, as 
the last, and the self-same treatment for both. Duulem- 
\ atum, D. rubescens, and D. reyium ; after discarding 
D. bicolor; the other three are among the very best 
bedders, and all of them ought to be propagated in the | 
spring, but they will do from summer and autumn cut- | 
tings nearly as well; IVilmore's Surprise, tbe new, large, 
half-double one, is of this class, a shoot from the old Dia- 
dematum; but whether it is as good as they, for beds, I 
cannot tell, having not seen a bed of it yet. All the Quer- 
cifolium breed ought to be propagated in the spring; but, 
like the Diadematums, they will do from summer eut- 
I tings; and four-inch cuttings are the best size. Unique 
! —I have always maintained that spring cuttings of 
