! 
March 16 . 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
407 
as thick a mixture as could he delivered by the syringe 
without clogging it. The whole being kept stirred, one 
man took a couple of pots full, and the syringe, and a 
' second took a vessel full of fine fresh slacked lime, quite 
' cooled down. The syringe-man having well battered his 
tree, the lime-man powdered heavily on the heels of it, 
i until the whole was as white as lime could make it. And 
! now, I may at once say, that out of a hundred hushes 
j done this way, not a bud has been taken since, as far as 
; we can discover; and I consider the invention ought to 
j he placed on a par with the famous recipe of the famous 
; Forsyth, and to be a fitting matter for the consideration 
! of our Parliament; who, however, I much fear are too 
i busy to think about Gooseberries. 
But jesting apart, let me advise cottagers and others 
to try it in another year; for my part, I think I shall 
always do it before a bud is taken. Let me here remind 
our friends of the propriety of our annual top or surface¬ 
dressing, to Gooseberries and Black Currants especially, 
j be it ever so little. By these means, surface fibres are 
constantly added, and the injurious effects of drought pre- 
j vented; old thatch, rotting litter, leaves and a little 
manure blended, will accomplish the thing. We have 
proved the praotice for many years. R. Errington. 
WHAT SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT BE 
DONE IN THE SPRING. 
If I were to say that we should take sufficient time 
to do everything in the right way, and that we should 
not hurry over anything we did in the spring, it would 
justify this heading of my letter; but I must go farther, 
although I cannot name one-tenth of the jobs that press 
for immediate attention, nor restrain the fast doers, who 
care not how the world goes round, provided they get 
every job through hand as fast as anything, no matter 
how scamping the work is got over, if you can put a 
plain surface on it for the time. 
I was coming down the road, one day last week, and 
met a gentleman,—a great gardener, not i'ar off,—and he 
asked my opinion on pruning some Hybrid Perpetual 
Roses that were planted last January, and also about 
some Rhododendrons which were planted five years 
since. These were old plants when he had them, and 
they were very bare at the time; but he was told they 
would soon take on in his new garden. New gardens, 
new brooms, and new drosses, do wonders, now and 
then, but not always! at least, all the time this garden 
was new these Rhododendrons took on nothing but 
barefacedness. After seeing there were no flower-buds 
of any account on these plants, I advised to have them 
cut down about the end of April; there are lots of 
sucker-like shoots, young enough and healthy enough, 
at the bottom of all the bushes, and that is a sign that 
the bare branches got too dry and hard to let up the 
sap, rather than any unliealthiness in the roots to 
hinder their part, and on that account I ordered all the 
branches, young and old, to he cut down to near the 
| bottom sucker-like shoots, which are only from six to 
j ten inches long, and I mention this to show a 
' reason for an opposite course, which is given to-day in 
I the part for the private correspondence, and also to let 
a cat out of the bag, where the poor thing has been 
! for a long time. 
If there were no shoots coming from the collar of 
1 these bare Rhododendrons, and that the tops looked 
! green and healthy enough, one would conclude the 
j bareness was caused by the plants being too close 
together at a former period, that the roots were all right, 
and that the bare part of the branches did not get into 
that hind-bound state which nothing cures so soon as 
cutting right down to the bottom; then there is no 
fault in any of the parts, and it seems a pity that a 
plant without any fault at all should bo cut down to 
the ground ; no gardener of any note would do such a 
thing till he tried and failed with all the plans he could 
think of—so the healthy, but hare, Rhododendrons 
were ordered to he cut down to different heights, 
from five feet to within eighteen inches of the ground, 
they standing just now full seven feet high. But the 
puzzle is, why do they advise to have all the small 
shoots cut-in so many inches about the beginning of 
April, while the large branches are not to be touched till 
the second week in May, or to a later period, if they aro 
worth keeping till they are getting out of bloom ? The 
puzzle is no puzzle to gardeners, however; at least, not 
to some of them, lor it is on the right application of the 
rule, or principle, which concerns this puzzle, or no 
puzzle, that one gardener excels another who has more 
advantages ; and the rule runs through every branch of 
gardening in which plants are concerned, and yet no 
one writes about it; but the best way to break the ice 
about it is first to mention an opposite rule. 
Early next June, if all is well, Mr Errington will put 
us all in mind of stopping the breastwood on wall- 
| trees at such and such lengths; and, to do that 
j as it ought to be done, he will be very particular in 
I advising to have the top part of the trees, and all the 
I “robbers” in any part of the trees, stopped first; in 
; nine or ten days after that, ho would have us go over 
the trees again, and stop the next strongest shoots, 
leaving the small fry and those about the bottom for 
some ten days longer; and the reason he gives is as 
good as the rule, that the small shoots may receive 
extra help from the supply which has been stopped 
higher up. Before his own vigorous growth stopped—I 
mean the growth of his body and limbs—they used to 
j summer-prune all parts of a wall-tree the same day; 
; but that made bad worse, the strongest shoots would 
push stronger than before, and the little ones got 
weaker and weaker every season, and when they came 
to the worst, people began to improve their ways, 
by stopping the supplies gradually, and what the strong 
lost the weak gained, and the more they gained, the 
fewer you could see of the very strong. Thousands of 
plants, besides fruit-trees, go through this style, or rule, 
of pruning every season; every strong shoot which is 
stopped during a summer’s growth comes under the 
rule; and here, the rule of thumb is right after all—the 
finger-and-thumb-pruning during a growth being of 
the very best kind. 
Now, what would half the world say if one were to 
recommend exactly the opposite way of pruning? To 
begin first to cut the smallest twigs on a tree, or bush ; 
next, the intermediate ones; and, last of all, the very 
strongest? Why, without giving it a thought, they might 
reasonably say, that would he worse than no pruning at 
all; but just think over it awhile, and, if I mistake not, 
I shall prove to you, and all the rest of them, that this 
side of the question is the right one, nevertheless; and 
showing the opposite rule, in the case of fruit-trees, 
will enable me now to make you understand my mean¬ 
ing. I do not say that two rules can both be 
best; but each rule, though the very opposite to tho 
other, is best in its own season; the first rule is the 
best in all summer-pruning with all plants; and the 
second is just as good, and fully as much called for in 
winter-pruning; yet we seldom think on this, and never 
write about it ; therefore it was necessary that some one 
should make a direct experiment, to prove this winter 
rule, before the whole body should be asked to put faith 
in it on the authority of any one, and having little else to 
do, I thought I might try the experiment first. I have 
done so, and it is as clear as anything, and of universal 
application. 
Against the west eqd of a retired cottage, on the 
