232 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
June 29. 
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Gooseberries. —We have been sadly pestered with 
the grub this summer; we have good crops, but the 
labour to keep these down, or for destroying them, 
really almost disheartens oue. I have tried some recipes, 
but find shaking the bushes as good a plan as any, after 
all. We dig a" hole beside the bush, and after giving 
each hush three or four unmistakeable shakes, the sur¬ 
face of the soil is raked into the hole, stamped upon, 
and buried. By such means we have almost entirely 
got rid of these pests, and now, I rejoice to think I did 
not throw away time in the concocting and application of 
nostrums; although 1 believe that Foxglove-water may 
be resorted to with good effect. However, in these 
parts, another pest of the Gooseberry has this season 
got fearfully ahead, and bids fair, like the American 
blight or Apple bug, to exterminate many trees. At a 
seat called Vale Royal, near hero, the gardener last year 
informed me that one-half of his bushes were killed out¬ 
right by the Red Spider; and indeed it is a serious pest. 
No doubt peculiarity of seasons has accelerated the 
extent of the depredations ; and so it is with other fruits. 
I have known Apples on dry soils go down for a year or 
two together under similar visitations. 
I have used sulphur in more ways than one, «and 
everybody knows that it is the best remedy, in one form 
or other, for the Red Spider at present known. Having 
myself suffered from that sad pest of the Vine, the Oidium 
Tucleeri, or Vine mildew, I have been compelled to 
resort to sulphur, and have preferred using Monsieur 
Grisou’s recipe, made known by him some three or foui- 
years since, and called “ Hydro-sulpha ted.’’ This we 
have tried on the Gooseberries infected with the Red 
Spider, and after two doses, I fe.el pretty well assured 
that we have extirpated it, or nearly so. My clever 
coadjutor, Mr. Fish, has saved me the necessity of a repe¬ 
tition on this matter, by showing how this is made in 
The Cottage Gardener of June 8th, p. 171. 
I find that the mulching system is of excellent service 
with the Gooseberry ; not but that it may bo grown very 
fairly without, but that the fruit may be produced in 
much greater abundance by a higher course of culture, 
the bushes sustained in a more healthy and permanent 
way; and, moreover, that sort of course persisted in, on 
rational principles, must, like all other cultural matters 
of a well ascertained character, prove more remunerative. 
It is not so much a question of mammal matters as 
of labour; as I before observed, it is not mere richness 
in the material, but the providing a surface medium 
at once progressively nourishing, and which is capable 
of affording a permanency ef moisture to the roots 
through all their needs. It is all very right to philo¬ 
sophise about non-conductors, ground-heat, &c., with 
things from hot climates; but the question of perma¬ 
nency of moisture in dry weather through a medium 
qualified to promote the multiplication and thorough 
sustenance of fibres, is a question of more importance 
still with our hardier fruits. R. Errington. 
DISA GRANDIFLORA AND THE PEACOCK 
IRTS. 
If I were asked which is the most popular and the 
scarcest plant in Europe, I should say, decidedly the 
Peacock Iris, for it is in everybody’s mouth; no seed- 
shop in Loudon, of any note, is without it at the proper 
time; and you might order a bushel of the roots, or bulbs, 
from llaarlem, like so many Van Thol Tulips; but it is 
more than questionable if there is a single individual 
in Europe who knows the plant, or has ever seen it! 
If, on the contrary, you were asked which is the most 
difficult plant in Europe to grow, probably you could 
not tell; but any of our great gardeners who tried it, 
would have little hesitation in saying that Disa grandi- 
jlora had baffled the whole strength and ingenuity of 
British gardening for the last thirty years. I have, ; 
therefore, the greater pleasure in being able to state, on 
the highest authority, that this Disa yrandiflora is about \ 
as easy to manage, and to get into flower, as the blue 
African Lily, Agapantlim umbellatus; that the two are 
much of the same nature, and that the greatest differ- j 
ence between them, in that respect, lies in the greater | 
bodily strength, so to speak, of the blue Lily. 
If you were to ask me which of all the Cape plants 
I consider the most handsome, I should, perhaps, be 
a little puzzled; but I would certainly say that Disa 
grandijlora is amongst the handsomest bulbs which I 
know of from the Cape, though not strictly a bulb. II j 
we say that Crinum Forbesianum, from the banks of the ; 
Delagoa river (would we had it from hence) is the most I 
superbly beautiful of all African bulbs known to us, we j 
may, with equal justice, affirm that Disa grandijlora is 
the most form^-beautiful flower of its race which we 
have yet seen from any part of the world; that is, the 
I race of ground Orchids, or terrestrial Orchidaceae, as 
they used to say. Surely, then, few would grudge five 
shillings to see this beautiful plant in perfection of 
! bloom, as I expect to see it very soon ; but, indeed, it 
may bo seen in this state for five farthings at the July 
show of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick; the 
admission tickets cost five shillings, and if they are 
divided into farthings, less than what I say will be the 
cost of seeing the one plant, as so many other things 
will be seen the same day. The plant will have four 
spikes of bloom from out of a great number of side- 
slioots, which it made since last September. I shall not 
say who will exhibit this plant till after the show, when 
I shall be able to give such a minute description of its 
whole treatment, all the year round, as will enable any¬ 
one, who can manage a Cape plant, to grow it without 
fear of any mishap whatever; which is some consolation 
to my own vanity, for I was one of a knot of practicals 
who were as completely beaten by the Disa, as the 
Emperor of Russia is already by anticipation; wo could 
not keep the plant alive any how. The reason was, we 
did not know “ how,” but all shall know it soon; mean¬ 
time, Ihe only figure of it to which I can refer the reader 
is that in the “ Botanical Register” for 1825. There is 
nothing more on its history or cultivation in our litera¬ 
tim-, as far as I know, except what has already—I be- . 
lieve last year—appeared in The Cottage Gardener. 
THE PEACOCK IRIS. 
It now appears that this has been as great a mystery 
l in botany, and for as great a term of years, as the Disa 
grandijlora has been in practical gardening. The whole 
living weight of botany in Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
America, has been on the wrong scent for this plant 
more than for the sixty years last past; no wonder, 
therefore, that the small fry and fraction of our country 
gardeners, who had any feelings for bulb culture, no less 
than the masters of the trade in bulbs, should have 
been so far led astray as to have, each section of them, 
for themselves, their ow r n peculiar root for a Peacock 
Iris, when the probability is, that there is none among 
us who had ever seen the plant at all. 
Two of the gentlemen who first led the world astray for 
j this plant are still amongst us—at least, I know one of 
them is, but it would not be prudent to mention names 
| when Europe is in arms. The story is too long for a sum¬ 
mer day ; but I may say that the Peacock Iris has been 
lost here, and on the Continent, for more than forty years; 
that no traveller after plants has crossed the country 
where it is supposed to grow during these forty years— 
I mean the north-west coast of our Capo territory, from 
Cape Town to the Orange River. That conjecture is 
founded on another conjecture, which is, that Masson, 
| who collected for Ivew, was the only traveller whoever 
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