20 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 9. 
glass or pits, thus to act, will only increase their diffi¬ 
culties and the chances against their stock three-fold. 
1 should not be afraid to risk all the Scarlet Geraniums 
in England out in the beds till Christmas, on the aver- 
| age of seasons, provided I had to dry them for storing 
like Dahlia roots; at any rate, ten degrees of frost would 
not alarm me much. Not a season has passed here for the 
last ten or twelve years without large numbers of odds 
and ends of the bedding-plants being left out in winter 
to take their chance until we were ready to dress the 
beds, and in the shrubberies and mixed borders they 
had it all their own way till the spring. No matter what 
kind of winter we had, I never recollect seeing them all 
quite killed, except to the surface of the ground, the 
roots and the collar of the plants generally escaped; and 
I have known the garden-men often taking these up in 
the spring when they were forking the borders, and get 
them up into good plants for the next summer after they 
had lost all their own pet plants which they kept in-doors; 
and it is a general remark with them, after a hard winter, 
that they must have a sharp look out after the old stools, 
or old plants, left among the shrubs, and yet, like tbeir 
fellow-cottagers, the first puff of cold wind in the autumn 
sets them to get up their Geraniums year after year; 
and if example is better than precept in some things, it 
is the other way in this instance, their friends and 
neighbours thinking they cannot do wrong if they 
follow the example of old garden-men. What I would 
do under this state of things would be to cut down just 
now, and quite close, oue-balf of the shoots that grew 
this season, and let the rest remain as long as the frost 
allowed, and as soon as real danger appeared I would 
cut off all the remaining shoots of that season’s growth, 
except a joint or two at the bottom, if tbe sboot was 
brown and well ripened, not without. Now, there is no 
more trouble in bringing a dozen or a score of Scarlet 
Geraniums down to this stage, out in the open border, 
to the middle or end of December, than there is in 
writing this letter, Then the worst part of the winter 
season is over for keeping plants. It is not the frost we 
have so much to fear and to guard against, but the damp. 
Any one, therefore, who can save potatoes from frost 
may preserve his Scarlet Geraniums, also, by going the 
right way about it, and that way is certainly not the 
usual mode of taking them out of the ground in a soft 
green state in October. Of course, when wo can pot 
them, or one of them, the sooner in October we get 
them in the better, for then the branches are to be 
saved. But that is not the present question ; but how 
best to keep Scarlet Geraniums like winter pota¬ 
toes. Mr. Rivers, the great rose grower, has shown, 
years ago, that a large bed of Scarlet Geraniums might 
be saved any winter by packing six inches deep of 
moss in among and all round the plants, and I have 
proved the experiment, for I tried it on purpose, more 
than once; and does it not appear a very simple con¬ 
trivance ? 
Until we can get rid of the old prejudice against 
keeping them out all the winter, let us say, that by 
the first of January we have them all dry and housed; 
but October is the time to begin, and that immediately; 
cut off half the shoots vory near to the old stem. Think 
of something quite dry , that can be packed round them, 
on the first appearance of sharp frost; also some boughs, 
i or something else to place over the tops—say a mat over 
j some hoops, to keep the other half of the shoots green as 
| long as you can. When they must go, cut them also, 
and then what remains is supposed to be well packed 
with something dry; beech leaves, from a shed or dry 
heap, will do well, with a few laurel boughs to keep 
them from blowing about. After this stage, consult your 
own convenience about the time of taking them in-doors, 
and if they are in by the turn of the new year, I shall 
j stand responsible for the result of all this, if carried out 
to the letter, to the very end of the old year; at any 
rate, I hope no cottager who reads this will be so foolish 
as to pull up his Geraniums in October, unless he is pro¬ 
vided with means to keep them in pots all the winter. 
I have said already, that there is nothing gained in pre¬ 
serving them thus in a bed from year to year, because 
they go to leaf too much, unless the soil is very poor ; 
and it is the same with Dahlias. By-the-by, I ought to 
have compared the keeping of Dahlias with this way of 
keeping the Geraniums, and the school way of comparing 
is just the thing to show it in the proper light—dry, 
drier, driest. Geraniums, dry, but not quite so ; Salvia 
patens, drier, but not quite dry; and Dahlias, driest. 
So we see that, gramatically, Geraniums should not be 
kept quite dry after they are thus prepared and brought 
into the house. I have seen hundreds of Geraniums 
killed by over-drying in-doors, but they were five months 
in store; two months, at least, more than there was any 
occasion for. As early in March as possible they ought 
to have been brought to light, and by the first of April, 
I know not a Scarlet Geranium, thus kept over the 
winter, that may not be trusted out-of-doors at Inver¬ 
ness, not exposed to all weathers, however, but put into 
the ground in a warm, sheltered place, and covered over 
at night, in cold or frosty weather, just as good managers 
do at present with their Dahlia roots; they put their 
Dahlias out very early, and when they a.re well-sprouted, 
they take them up again and divide them, and then 
plant them out for good ; this is the exact way that all 
Geraniums, which are kept dry for a time, ought to be 
managed. One of our correspondents wrote the other 
day to ask how to get Tom Thumb to flower, after being 
stored in saud in a cellar from this time last year, till 
June. The plants were quito bleached, and yet they 
soon recovered, and made fine plants, with healthy leaves, 
but little or no blossom. Now, Tom Thumb is one of 
the worst I know of to keep on the drying system; but 
it was not dried in reality, it was buried in dryish 
sand—that is, it was kept very uniform throughout, 
neither dry nor wet, and that is the happy medium. If 
those plants of Tom Thumb had been turned out-of- 
doors, sand and all, at the end of March, and a little 
dry hay placed over the sand, with some boughs or sticks 
thrown over it, to keep the hay, or fern, or moss, from 
blowing away, they would have been quite as safe from 
frost as when they were in the cellar, and every dry day 
the covering could be drawn to one side, and put on at 
night. A few years back, some people thought that 
some other people were riyht mad, as I have heard it 
said, for writing in books and newspapers, that potatoes 
ought to be planted in October or November, but no one 
would be afraid now to sit by the side of a man while in 
the act of writing the advice over again, for any doubts 
about his sanity or insanity; and so it will be about 
bedding Geraniums in a few years. We shall by that 
time hit on the best plan to save them in the beds till 
the fogs and frosts of November and December are 
gone, and we shall rout them out of all sorts of places 
by the end of March, and those who cannot save them 
for the three months of January, February, and March, 
why they ought to go without them altogether. 
When I came to Slirubland, the garden and farm men 
began to ask me for cuttings the first summer, and they 
had some; blit the May following they wanted plants, 
because their first lot got killed by the frost; to some 1 
gave a plant or two, and to others cuttings as before. 
The third May brought me so many customers that had 
I been a nurseryman I could have soon emptied my 
shelves; and yet I did not like to break oil' our ac¬ 
quaintance, and I hit on the following plan, which 
answered remarkably well; so well, indeed, that for the 
last few years I had a strong competition to head 
against, in the spring Mrs. Strange, the head car¬ 
penter’s wife, and Mrs. Keane, at the farm, sported 
