October 23. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
We have received blooms of the Great Western 
Fuchsia again, ancl they are monstrous. It will be 
grown in collections as a curiosity. 
We have recoived no Tulip called the Crystal Palace. 
If sent to us, it has foundered in the post-office, for it 
never reached us. 
There will be a hundred New Geraniums offered. We 
shall select, as soon as wo get all the catalogues, a few 
that our readers may buy without being disappointed, 
and leave them to please themselves it they want to go 
further. 
Blooms of the Mimilus Gigantea have been received; 
they are the largest we have seen, and, perhaps, the 
brightest, although they are no advance in the form. 
Those who grow the Mimilus must have it for its size 
and brilliancy ; but we do want to see a good round lip. 
The bost and dearest Hyacinth is Helicon; but, 
although it is in all the Dutch catalogues, nobody seems 
to have it when wanted. The only bulb we have seen 
of it was at Mr. Lockhart’s, in Fleet-street, and he only 
obtained one out of a considerable order. It is, therefore, 
no use mentioning it among the best of the best, because 
it would lay a person open to being deceived by some¬ 
thing being substituted. It would be worth fifteen 
shillings or a pound. 
FLORISTS’ FLOWERS CULTURE. 
The Ranunculus. — Perhaps there is no florists’ 
flower, when grown successfully, that gives more satis¬ 
faction than the Ranunculus. It must, however, be 
acknowledged, that success does not always attend upon 
its cultivation. The causes of failure, if certainly 
known, would lead to a more successful issue; but they 
may arise from such different causes as light soil, or too 
little moisture at the roots when growing, or from small, 
weakly, or injured roots. From one or other of these 
causes, or, perhaps, all combined, the crop of blooms 
will be scanty, small, and ill-coloured. And that is not 
the worst, the roots will, as a matter of course, be found 
smaller when they are taken up after the weakly bloom 
and sickly growth are over. Besides, if the same course 
of culture is persevered in, the evil will increase year 
after year; the roots will become smaller and smaller, 
and finally go out of existence entirely. This is not an 
imaginary case; we have frequently seen it even in 
places where better things might have been expected. 
On the other hand, we have seen, and proved, that by 
using proper soil, supplying abundance of moisture, and 
planting in the blooming-bed nothing but fine, strong, 
healthy bulbs, a fine bloom is as sure to follow as in 
any other bulbous florists’ flower. 
We trust, by the following directions, to render the 
culture of these truly elegant (in the fullest acceptance 
of the word) flowers easy even to the veriest tyro in 
Ranunculus culture. The subject divides itself into— 
1st, Situation; 2nd, Soil; 3rd, Planting; 4th, Watering; 
5th, Shading; 6th, Taking-up and Storing; and lastly, 
Propagation. 
1st. Situation. —It is only a waste of time and money 
to attempt to grow these flowers in improper situations. 
For instance, within the influence of a smoky atmosphere 
near largo towns, or upon a high hill in a dry soil, or in 
a swamp, are very objectionable. If it is in the power 
of the florist, let him choose a place for the Ranunculus- 
bed, neither too high nor too low—let it be a level sur¬ 
face, for reasons hereafter to be mentioned, and if it be 
sheltered by some means or other from the northern 
blasts, so much the better. 
2nd. Soil. —The Ranunculus being a moisture-loving 
plant, the soil should be of a retentive nature ; that is, 
capable of holding moisture for a considerable time. 
The best land for that purpose is the virgin mould of 
some alluvial soil on the banks of a river, or some low- 
51 
land pasture. It should be of a rather close texture, 
without any small stones or sand amongst it. In many 
gardening books the directions for the Ranunculus-bed 
are —“plant them in good garden mould, well enriched 
with rotten manure.'’ Now, a novice in gardening would 
immediately conclude that his garden, if the soil was | 
light, and well worked, that it was good garden mould, 
and that all he had to do was to dig in abundance of 
dung, and then plant his choice Ranunculus roots in it, j 
and all would go on right, and at a railroad speed. ; 
Upon this point many an ardent young florist lias failed 
—has become discouraged, and given up the culture of 
Ranunculuses, because he considered them, from his 
non-success, as being difficult to grow. Whereas, all 
that is required in respect to soil is to procure some of 
the kind mentioned above, lay it up for a year, turn it 
over until it is well incorporated, and then resolutely 
wheel out the old soil to the depth of a foot or more, 
place a thin layer of very rotten cow-dung at the bottom, 
and upon that place the fresh soil. If the situation is 
low, with a wet subsoil, it must be well drained, but if 
the subsoil is dry, there is no necessity for drainage; in 
fact, it is, in such a case, injurious, especially in dry 
summers. In wheeling in the soil, if it should be thought 
to be too poor, a small addition of decayed cow-dung 
will be advisable; but remember, it must be so well 
decomposed as to appear like a black powder. Let it 
be thoroughly mixed with the soil, and in order that 
this may be effectually done, let the bed be formed in 
dry weather, about the month of September. All these 
special preparations may appear formidable to the un¬ 
initiated, but it may bo overcome by diligence, and not 
being in too great a hurry. If the garden itself has been 
formed only a year or so, the soil in it may answer. 
What we protest against is the expectation that the old 
worn-out soil of a garden should be thought good enough 
for the Ranunculus. T. Appleby. 
{To be continued.) 
THE KITCIIEN-GAEOEN. 
Trenching —Resuming this subject from page 3!), 
where we advised the liberal use of mortar, or rather 
lime-rubbish, as a means of improving the staple of stiff 
loams and clayey subsoils, we may add that, in addition 
to that useful article, and the others mentioned, we have 
seen the refuse chippings of stone from a quarry used 
with great success: The kind we saw used was free¬ 
stone shatter, a sort of sandstone, in pieces never larger 
than half a brick; this material, dug into the subsoil of 
a piece of ground previously very stiff and retentive of 
water, materially improved it, and an experiment of the 
same kind in the same neighbourhood, we witnessed, 
when the same kind of stone-chippings were laid on a 
piece of stiff land and ploughed in at the rate of some 60 
or 80 loads per acre, the result was highly satisfactory, 
so far as the crop was concerned, as well as the future 
tilling of the ground; we therefore advise our gardening 
friends, whose kitchen-garden consists of a soil on which 
they can hardly set foot in wet weather, to look around 
them and see what materials their neighbourhood con¬ 
tains likely to improve it. Anything that can be had in 
quantity, of a kind diametrically opposite to the soil 
intended to be improved, will do. We have dug in the 
bottom of the trench large quantities of common chips, 
and other waste from the carpenter’s yard ; as well as 
weeds, decayed vegetables, and other rubbish of that 
kind; sometimes fresh vegetables, but then we carefully 
avoid horse-radish, Jerusalem artichokes, dandelion roots, 
couch grass, and some others, which find their way up¬ 
wards more than most plants. In fact, anything that 
will prevent the subsoil from again consolidating itself 
into a hard substance will do, the object being to make 
