September 5. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
should be confined entirely to new kinds ; and also, that 
[ the reaving of Roses, in the nursery trade, might be less 
| costly than at preseut; although I can hardly expect the 
I prejudice of the age will go along with me so far just 
yet. 
All this, I say, I am so convinced of, that I have been 
considering, for a long while, about the best practices of 
propagation in the open air, so as to bring the question 
home to every one who hears of it, and cares anything 
about it; and the result is, that I have been forced to 
make out a new plan on purpose, out of the two best 
practices of modern times known to me. I have tried the 
experiment this week, as I have just said, and will report 
on it, if I am spared so long; and I want to hear the 
result of other trials of it, all over the country, next 
spring, if only with cuttings of one hybrid perpetual 
Rose. But even then, should the reports be two to one 
against it, I shall still hold the opinion, that we, ourselves, 
are to blame, rather than that the new plan is not 
according to the soundest practice, and founded on a 
principle which we cannot gainsay. 
The first part of the plan I borrowed from Mr. 
Forsyth, and made it still more simple and less trouble¬ 
some ; and the second part—that about the cuttings— 
I learned from the late Mr. Knight in his own garden, 
at Downton Castle, in 1830. Long before then, he pub- 
I lished this system of making cuttings, in the “Transac¬ 
tions of the Horticultural Society,” but, singularly enough, 
gardeners either forgot it altogether, or never heard 
about it; and I never saw it mentioned in any of our 
popular works; therefore, let no one suppose, that in 
looking-out earnestly for a sure and simple mode of 
striking cuttings out-of-doors, I was so foolish as to 
attempt a new process, while all that I could desire was 
ready to my hand. 
The mode of preparing cuttings, in a particular way, 
was tried by Mr. Knight, so far back as the autumn of 
1812; this experiment succeeded perfectly, and is re¬ 
corded in the “ Transactions of the Horticultural Society,” 
vol. ii., page 1 IT. Instead of cutting across under a 
joint, as we all recommend a cutting to be prepared for 
general purposes, when the bottom is to be placed on 
the soil or sand, he cut the bottom of his cuttings on the 
slant, so as to look more like a heel cuttings; the slant 
part lie placed in contact with the pot, and the parts 
fitted as well as if the cutting bad grown out from the 
pot itself. 
Now, we know that when the ends of some woody 
cuttings touch the drainage, and rest upon it, they strike 
much faster than when they rest in the soil. We know, 
also, by Mr. Forsyth’s plan, that when the ends of the 
cuttings rest against the side of the inner pot they root 
much sooner than if they were merely inserted half 
way between the pots; and, moreover, a heeled cutting, 
which is the same thing as a “slip,” it being slipped 
from the branch, will get a better hold on the side of the 
pot than one cut right across, and will root sooner, 
on account of this very hold, so to speak, than the 
I other. Then, there is no denying the fact, that being 
in closo contact with the side ot the pot hastens the 
rooting of a cutting; when the pot is constantly kept ] 
moist, as in Mr. Forsyth’s plan, the rooting is sooner, 
and the cutting is a great deal more safe from harm. 
Last of all, when the end of the cutting is sloped, as by 
Mr. Knight, the whole is in that condition which they 
call ne plus ultra. 
Those, therefore, are the foundations on which I 
propose to establish a ne plus ultra system of growing 
Rose-cuttings in the autumn out in the open air, and 
without the help of auythiug besides, and as many 
other cuttings as one chooses to try that way. But, 
first of all, let us not waste cuttings in learning how to 
make them so as to fit to the side of a pot; rather take 
an empty pot, any size will do, and a handful of Laurel 
433 
sittings, and practice a while, till one gets into the 
exact cut: put the knife across the cutting exactly under 
the last bud, and cut downwards slantwise; then fit the 
slant to the outside of the pot, just two inches below the 
rim, and if the bark fits the pot all round, as if with a 
graft, you have hit the nail upon the head at the very 
first start; but try two or three more to make srire work 
of it. The exact length of the sloping cut does not 
matter much, so that it is not too low, nor very short; at 
least, I think not; but I am as young in the fancy as any 
of you. My slope is about the same length as the heel 
to an ordinary Rose-cutting—a little more or less. My 
cuttings are hardly four inches long, and they are nearly 
three inches deep when planted, and I left two leaflets 
to each of them, the one to the top bud is out of the 
ground, and the next just within the surface; by the 
I time I finished, you could not pull one of them out 
: without a good pull; they stand close together, but that 
is not the better for them, only that I got more of them 
into a small space. 
Here is the way I did it, and the space they occupy: 
i I made a hole in a west border with a trowel, nearly ten 
1 iuches deep and only two inches wide at the bottom; I 
| then plunged a No. 24-pot in the hole, letting the rim 
of it be a little lower than the surface of the border— 
there is a good cavity below the pot, which is to make 
sure of drainage in the winter. I then opened a ring 
round the outside of the pot, three inches deep, and 
nearly filled it with soft yellow sand and light soil from 
the surface of the border—half-and-half; then, without 
a dibber, T began planting the Rose-cuttings in this 
trench, or ring, outside the pot, using only my hands, 
the left one to hold the slant of the cutting exactly 
against the outside of the pot, and the right-hand to draw 
and fix the sandy-compost right earnestly against both 
the cutting and the pot—and so on all the way round. 
There is clay in the bottom of the pot, and I shall keep 
it full of water till the end of October, or later, if the 
weather is dry. After that, the damp of the season will 
keep it in the right state for suckling the cuttings; but I 
shall keep an eye to it, and learn as I go. Now, my 
garden represents the outside pot in Mr. Forsyth’s 
plan; I only took his inside pot, and I might put lots of 
drainage under it, as he did, but I wanted the hole for 
the outer pot; and how was that to be got, without 
cutting through right on to New Zealand? and that 
would be the hardest cutting to strike of all the cuttings 
we ever heard of. 
Last spring, when I was planting out something, I 
found a bundle of Rose-cuttings I put in by the heels 
last autumn and forgot them, the most of them were 
caliced at the bottom ; but forgetting all about them, I 
thought the best thiug would be to throw them away; 
then it occurred to me to try an experiment with them, 
and that experiment was the outset of the ne plus ultra 
system. The experiment was this;—there was a soft 
“ place brick ” in the garden wall behind me, the only 
brick of the kind I could see, and the frost took to it, 
as it was “ between wind and water” as we say, or half 
in and half above the level of the border. I placed two 
of the cuttings against this brick, and another two 
against a dry “ stock brick ” next to it; but the matter 
which formed at the bottom, and from which the roots 
would come, would not admit the cuttings being put 
quite dose to either brick which 1 wanted to do, to see 
the effect of what Mr. Fish says about the sides of a 
pot hindering the accumulation of matter at the bottom 
of cuttings, and so cause them to root faster,—a most 
valuable suggestion. The two against the dry brick 
perished from two much sun-heat in March ; but one of 
the two against the soft brick rooted, and is now nearly 
a yard high, and prqves to be some hybrid perpetual. I 
am now sanguine about the effect of the damp pot on 
my last cuttings; but I have no doubt about their 
