204 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— June 17,1850. 
roots I found they were covered with flags six feet from the 
Vinery, and plastered with lime. I enquired the reason, of 
course, and was told that it was to keep the wet off the roots. 
After that I took up two or three of the flags, and found 
rotten and decayed roots close to the flag. Ought I to take 
off the flags directly, or leave them till the autumn ?—J. M.” 
Were I writing privately to this correspondent, I 
should require more time and particularity than I can 
now spare, to prevent myself being the cause of any 
further disappointment to him. I am not afraid to 
commit to paper here the views that strike me, because 
I feel confident that whatever is mystified or unsound 
in them will he cleared up or dispelled by the superior 
intelligence and practical experience of others, and be¬ 
cause next to the pleasure of ascertaining and practising 
a truth is the delight of having an error or a miscon¬ 
ception pointed out in the gentlemanly way in which 
these things are always done in this serial. 
In my rambles the other day, on speaking on con¬ 
creting the bottom of borders, one of our best gardeners 
instantly reprobated the custom, and advocated, instead, 
the concreting the surface to keep the soil comparatively 
dry, aud the roots near the surface. The pages of this 
work alone show that there are very vague notions on this 
subject floating about with in the horticultural horizon. 
All of us are conversant with the fact that fruit-trees 
frequently will not flourish in a prepared border, and 
will fruit immensely on the sides and ends of dwelling 
houses, where the whole space over the roots is flagged 
or pitched closely over; the most of the moisture for 
the roots being drawn from the surrounding medium. 
The great fruitfulness of such trees consists in the fact, 
that in general the juices are highly elaborated from the 
supply of moisture being comparatively limited, and 
that obtained at no great distance from the surface. 
The mere growing principle is reduced to a minimum, 
and in self defence the plant makes an extra effort to 
perpetuate its existence by means of fruit and seed. 
But I have seen plants situated exactly in the same 
manner as respects paving and pitching over their roots, 
and yet in time become excessively luxuriant and un¬ 
fruitful, merely because the roots had the opportunity 
of descending into deep, moist soil, and gorging them¬ 
selves with moisture at a great distance from the light 
and air. I have recorded how I covered a Vine border, 
for several years, with a concrete impenetrable by water, 
formed of tar and gravel. The bolder had rather a 
steep slope, and was covered for a width of fifteen feet, 
the water going at once to a drain. When the concrete 
was removed the surface of the rich soil beneath was 
laced with fine healthy roots—the soil was in a fine 
equable state as respects moisture—showing that moisture 
had been drawn to the roots from the surrounding ground. 
The reason I removed the concrete was, that 1 thought 
the Vines were getting weaker, though anything but 
less fruitful, as every little shoot almost would show 
several bunches, and oven the laterals showed fruit 
plentifully. 
The reasons of this extra fruitfulness may be three¬ 
fold ; the roots from the slope of the border and 
drainage could not easily get down; the whole of the 
border was concreted over, not a part, aud the roots 
were incited to keep near the surface, from litter and 
fermenting matter thrown over the border in winter 
and spring, and the action of the sun on the hard 
surface in summer. This happened in a Vinery, aud 
mostly with Vines that, years before, were just such as 
our correspondent describes—the fruit either colouring 
badly, shanking or shrivelling, or tendrilling off, not¬ 
withstanding my efforts, mechanical aud otherwise, 
though the foliage was much finer, and the wood 
stronger than ever it has been since. The mechanical 
contrivance consisted in tying a piece of matting round 
a piece of stono, lead, &c., from a quarter to one ounce 
in weight, tying the other end of the string to the end 
of the attempted runaway bunch, and leaving it 
suspended, when the strain thus occasioned incited a 
greater flow of the fruitful juices into the shoulder of 
the bunch than otherwise it would have obtained. I 
am only justified in forming this surmise, be it right or 
wrong, merely from the results often manifested in 
closely-watched experiments, the bunches unoperated 
upon becoming every day more corkscrewed, until every 
floretjfinally fell off; while most of the others had even 
their corkscrew involutions untwined, and formed, 
ultimately, fair bunches. The other remedy, and a 
rather expensive one, was keeping the houses much 
drier aud hotter in autumn, by using fire-heat then 
liberally for ripening the wood, the immaturity of 
which, I judged, was the chief cause of my annoyance. 
In such circumstances, I found that I could be much 
more successful by fruiting young rods than in cutting 
back to a bud on the spurring principle, whatever means 
I took, by disbudding and otherwise, to ripen the buds 
at the base of the shoots. 
This immaturity of the wood and ultimate con¬ 
sequences, combined with an apparent luxuriance of 
growth, I attributed to the roots feeding in too deep 
and moist a soil, in which they were enabled to absorb 
more moisture of a rank nature than the leaves and 
bark, under a common amount of light and heat, were 
able to elaborate. In this I was more confirmed by the 
position of the border, which, instead of sloping out 
from the wall, rather sloped considerably towards it. A 
drain from three to four feet deep, terminating in a 
dumb well, was dug in the front of the border, and 
that, though it lessened, did not eradicate the evil. I 
then lifted the roots of the Vines for the most of their 
length, found them long and bare of fibres, running 
deep, and what fibres there were going almost straight 
down ; I put some drains across the border, elevated it at 
the back to give it a slope, placed the roots within six 
inches of the surface in fresh soil, and planted some 
young Vines at the same time, as I could not do 
without a crop of some sort, and the old Vines suffered 
little or nothing from the manipulation. In various 
experiments I found that the soil was drained with great 
difficulty, as even close to deep drains the moisture 
would be retained as in a sponge. 
The foregoing operations would have quite satisfied 
me, but for this quality of the soil, and the necessity, 
at that time, of forcing pretty early; and I resorted to 
the concreting early in autumn, for the purpose of pre¬ 
venting the autumn and winter rains getting directly 
into the soil of the border wanted for early forcing. 
Could I have got a tarpaulin at my elbow, I might not 
have thought of such an economical plan, as I must 
confess all my predilections were in favour, not only of 
having the roots near the surface, but also within the 
free access of air. I have sometimes regretted that I 
did not leave the solid concrete of the surface of the 
border to remain another four years or so longer. 
Whilst it remained the Vines were extra fruitful, and 
very heavy crops were taken, visitors pronouncing that 
the Vines were thoroughly ruined for another season, 
though, when that season came, there was just as heavy 
a crop as ever, though not one bunch that showed in 
four was left. Since then I have tried various cheap 
modes, such as a coating of tar, spread as thinly as pos¬ 
sible, to throw off the autumn and winter rains, remov¬ 
ing it in summer; aud though the luxuriance is not ex¬ 
traordinary, there is always a vast quantity more of 
fruit shown than it is desirable to retain. Ever since 
the Vine roots were raised, and excessive moisture 
guarded against, there has been no trouble with ten- 
drilled bunches; and as for pruning, on those Vines 
especially whose roots were all lifted, or the young ones 
planted near the surface, all directions and systems may j 
