54 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 27. 
other occasions, I have found that it has an excellent 
tendency to counteract a hound or costive habit. 
1 have now gone through the chief garden vegetables 
applicable to live-stock and the wants of the household; 
and in a further paper will proceed to our five or ten 
acre plot, and endeavour to point to a good economy, 
with a few remarks on cultural processes. 
R. Errington. 
SPRING AND SUMMER PROPAGATION. 
A new “ sport” was pointed out to me the other day 
in a garden near me, where the ilowers of the Japan 
Quince [Cydonia japonica) turned from the usual deep 
crimson to different shades of rose colour. There is no 
doubt but the white or pale blush variety of this plant 
originated in a similar way, and I am sure that two 
good intermediate varieties might be had from the plant 
now Til sport in this neighbourhood, if it vvere in the 
hands of a clever propagator. The sporting shoots—for 
there are three of them—are far from the ground, and 
are mere spurs, so that they can neither be layered in 
the ground, nor got into pots placed upon posts close to 
the spurs. This plant does not readily take by either 
grafting or budding,—at least, they say so,—but I never 
made the attempt, and I cannot say cither way. Some 
might say it is now too late in the season to graft fruit- 
trees like this, but that is not at all right, for every tree 
or plant that will take from grafting in March and 
April, will take equally well any day from this to the 
end of next August, and of that everybody in the 
country ought to be aware. That, however, is not all; 
there are some trees that will hardly take by grafting 
until the summer growth has advanced considerably. 
The Walnut, the Beech, and some fancy Oaks, evergreen 
and not-evergreen ones, recur to me as familiar in¬ 
stances; and who knows but this Cydonia might he 
grafted on that plan. jJas any one ever tried it so? At 
all events, this plant, or, rather, the sport on it, set me 
thinking so much, that I could write a very useful lec¬ 
ture on spring and summer grafting, and other modes 
of propagation as well, and that is how 1 came to think 
about it, and to introduce it into my series of “the 
alphabet of gardening,” so that those who do not choose 
to bo turned back to the A. B. 0. need not trouble 
themselves to read any more of this article, but pass on, 
at once, to Mr. Fish’s department. 
In spring grafting they generally take shoots of the 
last summer’s growth for grafts, because they are the 
easiest to handle, and to unite with the stock; but there 
is no law in nature to hinder a man from grafting a 
shoot of any age which he may think proper. There 
is a story of' a foreigner, I think Dr. Van Mons, who 
once grafted a whole pear tree on the old bottom of 
another pear tree, and it did just as well as a last sum¬ 
mer’s shoot. I think there is another story about how 
they could never get the Walnut to graft, until some 
one, and I think Mr. Knight, the great vegetable phy¬ 
siologist, tried two and three-years’ old grafts, and, I 
believe, he could do little or no good, even with these, 
j until June, or early in the summer, after the trees were 
| out in full leaf and a little growth made. Perhaps I am 
j not quite right here, but the thing is right enough, for I 
. grafted that way often and often ; and I recollect, when 
; I was in Herefordshire, hearing of a farmer who, when¬ 
ever he tasted any particular cider which he thought 
better than any he had, would beg a graft of the apple 
tree from the fruit of which that cider was made, what¬ 
ever time in the year it might happen to be, winter or 
summer, it was all the sume to him ; but I never heard 
that he made use of any such graft which he fancied 
after the first week in September till the usual time of 
grafting in the spring; but all his selected grafts from 
the end of March to the end of August he would graft 
as soon as he got home. It was from disbelieving this 
story that I first took to try the summer grafting, and it 
is ail right enough. 
This is how it is managed : Suppose you see a sport, 
or something in a tree, next summer, which you take a 
fancy to, and you wish to graft a shoot from it; take a 
shoot of the last season’s growth, or if the part is two or 
three years old it may do as well, then from this graft 
cut off all the growth of this season, very nearly, but not 
quite, then cut off all the leaves which were not removed 
in cutting the fresh growth. You see here that your 
graft is plump, full of sap, and swelled buds, or, at any 
rate, lots of hidden buds where the young wood was cut 
from, and what is the difference between it and one cut 
from the selfsame tree last February, only that it is 
more full of sap, and that is in its favour? The truth 
is, you put this graft back four or five months, and now 
you cut your stock, or branch of a tree for a stock, that, 
too, is now full of running sap, on it you put your graft 
and clay, and it is wonderful how soon you see the graft 
in leaf again; and you must not leave it nearly so long 
untied as a spring graft, because the action of making 
new wood is so much faster in the summer than it is in 
the spring of the year. 
We now see that the same law which taught us lately 
to break off the full buds, and any young growth on a 
Bose-cutting, late in the spring, is equally applicable to 
grafts in the summer; all we have to do is to cut oil' all 
the young growth of the season to very near the bottom, 
and the hidden buds then cannot swell much before the 
union of the graft with the stock takes place, whereas, 
if wc attempted to make a cutting with the leaves on, 
or to graft with leaves on the shoot, the action of the 
leaves w'ould dry up both the cutting and the graft 
before a communication was made for supplying the 
necessary sap, at least, out in the open air; hut if the 
stock was in a pot, the graft might take to it with the 
leaves on under a hand or bell-glass; the cutting the 
same, under protection. 
But how is the sport on the Japan Quince to be 
propagated ? It is said not to take on any other stock 
by the usual process; but suppose it might be worked 
on another Japonica, all one would have to do would 
be to buy one in a pot, aud graft the sport on it, after 
cutting away the leaves and any young growth ; still the 
sap already in this stock plant might mix with the sap 
of the sport so much as to turn hack the sport to the 
old thing again, then all the labour would be lost; for 
fear of this being the case, I did not advise a plant to 
be got for a stock, and yet the lady was anxious to have 
the sport secured in some w'ay or other It struck me 
that the following plan was more likely to answer than 
any other that could be tried, and there is never a 
moment to be lost in securing a sport as soon as it is 
noticed, because in a few more days it might turn back 
to the original. What I advised was this, to dig down 
to the roots of the same plant, aud select two or three 
roots about the size of a penholder, and as long as they 
could be had, and with as many little fibry roots as j 
possible, to graft these with short pieces from the sport, 1 
to clay the graft in the usual way, aud then to pot the 1 
roots so grafted in forty-eight sized pots; the roots to he 
coiled in the pot, and one half of the grafted part to be j 
buried in the soil, aud to put the pots under a hand¬ 
glass in a cold frame, aud to keep them shaded with a 
piece of newspaper over the hand glass, so that the 
other plants in the frame might not he shaded- From , 
October to April 1 do not see that there would be much , 
advantage in this root-grafting over grafting on an 
established plant in a pot, as the roots of plants are 
supposed to be full of ripe juice all the winter. I am 
afraid that if a sport that must he grafted, like this one, j 
which is not likely to come from cuttings, is supplied j 
