June 2G] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
191 
Azaleas. —Tn most collections the glory of this beauti¬ 
ful flower will be gone. Interest in its welfare must not 
for a moment flag, if it is expected to furnish a striking 
ornament in our conservatories in winter and spring. 
No time should he lost in removing every withered 
flower and leaf, and, unless when a pod or two of seed is 
desirable, cutting clean off all these appendages as 
soon as the bloom fades. In early-flowering plants this 
will have been done, with late ones it must not be 
neglected; with early plants, to ensure uniformity of 
growth, strong shoots may be pinched at the point, and 
they will then produce two or three, instead of one, 
while each will have time to ripen a bud for blooming 
next season. This stopping, unless in extreme cases, 
should now be more sparingly resorted to; and even 
then, the plants should command a close humid atmos¬ 
phere, to ensure rapidity of growth, and then a drier 
airy situation, that that growth may be ripenened and 
hardened before autumn closes. The sooner the wood 
is rqiened, and the flower buds thus formed, the better 
will the plants bloom, and the more easily will they 
bend, and suit themselves to the circumstances in which 
you wish to place them, as respects accelerating or 
retarding the bloom. Instead, therefore, of setting your 
plants, now finished blooming, in a cool place behind a 
north wall, give them the closest and warmest place in 
your greenhouse, with plenty of moisture at root and 
top, until you get fresh growth freely commenced. A 
pit kept close, or a late forcing house, would answer a 
similar purpose. If thus attended to, and nothing but 
bloom produced (no seed), plants will thrive in the same 
pots for years, with perhaps a slight top dressing; but 
if shifting is desirable, it is best done, not before, but 
just after, growth is fairly commenced. If the ball is 
well soaked before hand, and the hair-like roots, though 
gently disentangled at the outside of the ball are not 
injured, the plant will receive no stoppage in its growth; 
the advancing shoots ensuring a quick root action in 
the fresh soil. When the object is to keep a specimen 
in good flowering condition, the shift should always be 
small; when from free growth a specimen is to be made, 
the shift may be large ; but in an established specimen, 
unless the ripening process is soon begun, a large shift 
will be likelier to give you fine foliage instead of flowers. 
After trying several compositions, nothing seems to 
answer these greenhouse Azaleas so weU as fibry sandy 
peat, with nodules of clean charcoal, to assist in keeping 
the soil open, when it otherwise would get much com¬ 
pressed in the course of years. Watering with clear 
water is generally to be preferred; weak manure-water 
may be given when growing and opening their flowers, 
but it must be weak. Green-fly is easily settled with 
tobacco smoke, red-spider with fumes of sulphur, but 
the thrip is hard to flit: in the case of all these free 
growth now is the best preventive. For the thrip, 
clipping the plant in thin mud, and cleaning it a day or 
two afterwards, washing with gum-water, lashing it 
when lying on the ground, (to prevent the liquid entering 
the pot), with clear soot-water, and a weak infusion of 
bruised laurel leaves, I have found less or more effectual; 
but prevention is better than cure, and free growth now 
is the best prevention, and not the worst cure, provided 
always that growth is sufficiently indurated before winter. 
Camellia. —Similar remarks will apply to this winter¬ 
flowering plant. A few exceptions may be specified. It 
will stand cutting in better than the azalea. For such 
plants a higher temperature will be no objection. The 
heat from sweet decomposed dung will cause the old 
stems to break freely, but such heat is always a preca¬ 
rious matter with azaleas, as a little steam from dung 
soon does for them. In potting, a considerable portion 
of sandy loam, enriched with leaf mould, or dried old 
cow dug, may with advantage be used. As soon as the 
buds are fairly formed at the points of the shoots, the 
plants must be gradually inured to a drier and sunnier 
atmosphere. 
Calceolarias. —Cuttings of shrubby ones will propagate 
very freely, in shady places, under baud lights, or even 
under a frame when there is a little bottom beat, if the 
plants from which the cuttings are taken have not been 
too long exposed in the open air. Unless for wintei’- 
flowering plants, they will be soon enough inserted in 
August and September. Large, fine-flowering florists’ 
vaideties, herbaceous or otherwise, cannot be looked 
after too carefully uow. Tf either thrip or green-fly are 
allowed to ravage your old plants now, however fine they 
may have been, and however valuable the kinds, I 
would give but little for your stock, either of plants or 
cuttings. It is very difficult, and not at all desirable to 
preserve plants that have flowered over the winter. 
Treat the plant how you may, it will be subject either to 
damping, or getting long-legged; while the beauty of a 
Calceolaria consists in no mean degree in having fine 
leaves hanging over the sides of the pot. It is not 
desirable, because cuttings struck during this, or rather 
the three follow ; ng months, will take less room in the 
beginning of winter, and yet steadily grown on, will 
form a very large specimen before April. Cuttings 
taken from plants, kept cool in summer, at the back of a 
north wall, inserted in sandy soil, on raised mounds, in 
such a cool shaded position in September, yielded plants 
that required two men to move them in May. But, as 
has been already detailed in this work, the blowing off 
of gnats in a sunny day, and an attack of the thrip, in 
unison with a good smoking of tobacco, a few years ago, 
depi-ived me of a fine collection that had cost me much 
time and trouble to procure. 
Cinerarias. —These sweet gems will now bo nearly 
over. Late sown spring seedlings will bloom best iit a 
cool, shady place. Seed for early winter-blooming may 
be now sown, and that from the finest kinds only 
selected. There is much interest in growing seedlings, 
even though you only get one in a hundred worth keep¬ 
ing. Small pots for them are most desirable, until you 
see what you have got. In limited space, and where the 
perception of the beautiful is strong, amateurs should 
confine themselves to the best flowers out. Young 
plants generally bloom better than old ones, and they 
look so much neater and healthier. To procure them, 
small cuttings, or rather suckers, may now be taken off, j 
and inserted under hand lights; or the plants, after 
having the flower stems cut down, may be turned out ' 
into a shady border, the ball surrounded with rich light 
soil, and well watered when necessary. By August or 
September you will thus obtain fine, strong rooted 
plants, sprung from your old one as a stool; and these, 
if potted early, will come into bloom early. Either by 
such as these, or by seedlings sown early, the conserva¬ 
tory and greenhouse may be kept gay all the winter. 
These I think the best modes for general use. But last 
season, owing to a press of matter, and that gi’eat evil¬ 
doer, procrastination, our Cinerarias were not planted 
out until it was too late to do so, but were left standing, 
and pretty well starved out, in a vei'y unsuitable position ; 
to be left in. About the middle of August, a number of , 
those in the smallest pots were picked out, and taken to 
the potting bench, turned out of their pots, the most of ' 
the old soil removed, and the whole of the fry of cluster¬ 
ing suckers, with the exception of two or three of the ; 
best removed. They then were potted in light rich soil, 
in small pots, kept close in a cold pit, until fresh growth 
had commenced, then obtained a liberal shift, and free j 
exposure, until the cold nights rendered shelter neces- ; 
sary, and from these plants I had a most abundant 
bloom from the beginning of November all through the 
winter. We may thus obtain the same result from 
different means. R. Fish. 
—-— -».< 
