June 10. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
19? 
and yet all Juulbs require the most perfect drainage. 
The way to effect it is to make the hole at the bottom 
of the pot so much larger,—a hammer, or any piece of 
iron, will do that,—by chipping off a little and a little 
round the edges of the hole. I have often made a slit 
across the bottom of the pot from rim to rim, not wider 
than the hole itself, and that is the most perfect way of 
draining without much crocks. 
The first potting, after shaking off all the soil, ought 
only to be a temporary shift, and only to last until the 
bulb is in full growth in June; therefore, take any 
small pot that will just hold the roots and the bulb, and 
nothing to spare. One or two crocks will then do over 
the hole, and the bulb may bo only half buried in the 
pot; water immediately, and very little more water will 
do till the leaves come, or else the blossom-buds; some 
kinds put up the flower-scape first, and some the leaves, 
and they prefer a dry, warm air just at this critical time, i 
and to be as near the glass as possible. Any of the 
crosses that are known to be from the hardy strains, or 
from one hardy parent in the cross, are sure to succeed 
on a greehouse shelf, near to the glass, until the flower 
begins to open, when the drawing-room is the best 
place for them. Warm, dry air, and not to be full in 
the sun, is the thing for all, and every one of them, 
while they are in blossom; and if the room is not too 
hot, they will keep in flower longer in it than they would 
in a greenhouse or conservatory. When the flowers are 
over, the stalks or flower-scape should be cut to within 
three inches of the pot, and the remainder allowed to 
wither before it is pulled off. It is a very bad plan to 
cut these stems down to the bulb, as if they decay 
or damp the bulb will suffer. After this, and under¬ 
stand the time to be the height of summer, remove 
them to a close pit, and let the sun raise the heat to 90°, 
before you give them air; with sun heat from 70° to 90°, 
the pit must bo kept quite damp, by pouring in water 
between the pots, and by the syringe in the afternoon, 
when the pit is closed for the day. They will require 
no shading from the sun with this treatment, or if they 
do, and the leaves droop, it is a bad sign. After ten 
days or a fortnight of this change they arc fit for final 
potting, and if all goes on well, this potting ought to 
last them from seven to ten years, and as much longer 
as they are in health and blooming order; so that there 
is very little trouble with Hippeasters, except the little 
at first. 
By keeping them cool in February and March, and 
setting them up to grow from the middle to the end of 
April, there is not a single Hippeaster in England that 
could not be grown, flowered, and ripened in the said 
pit by the end of September. An upright, No. 32-pot 
is the right size for a single flowering bulb, and at 
the final potting the whole bulb should be just covered, 
and nothing more. 
The winter treatment is the same, year after year, and 
keeping them cool in the spring is in order to keep the 
stove ones back till the season is more advanced. 
Specimen Plants. —After a while, many, indeed 
most of them, make side-bulbs or offsets, and to get a 
bulb into a specimen size, it should not have less than 
four offsets at a flowering age, and if more all the better, 
if they have been so thinned at first that all stand at 
| regular distances from one another. As they progress 
I to this size they will require larger pots, and the sizes 
I must be judged of from the diameter of the batch; 
nothing looks worse, or is more hurtful to bulbs, than 
j putting them in large pots—there should never be more 
than half-an-inch between a large bulb and the side of 
the pot, the same with a cluster of bulbs in this spe¬ 
cimen fashion. I am not so sure about the proper 
depth. I used pots twenty-two inches deep, and twelve 
■ inches in diameter, for seven years, with Gladioluses, 
• Alstromerias, and a few other plants, and they all 
seemed to like it. I think all bulb-pots ought to be 
deeper than we have them, that the holes in the bottom 
should be much larger than the usual run, and that 
much less materials for draining should be used. I 
have heard it objected that clusters of side-bulbs do 
not ripen their leaves so soon as the old bulb, in the 
middle, but I am quite sure all that is groundless. Hip- 
peastrum retioulatum, Aulicum, and Solandriflorum, 
and the first generation of crosses from them, would 
keep green all the year round, if they were in the stove, 
and had water given to them ; but they, too, and every 
member of the family, may safely be put to rest by with¬ 
holding water from them after the end of September, 
whatever stage the leaves may be in, provided they were 
grown well all through the summer; and it is the same 
with these clustered specimens. I would allow them to 
be kept green no longer than the sun was high enough 
to ripen them. I have also flowered them from No¬ 
vember to March, and let them go to rest by the end of 
May. 
1 called at Dropmore, at the end of May, 1831, to 
look out some rare kinds of this family, and found every 
one in the place piled up under the stage of the green¬ 
house, all dry, and leafless; there was a waggon-load of 
dried pots there at the time. Mr. Bailey was gardener 
there then, and I recollect, he and a gardener in the 
neighbourhood told me it was a sight to see forty- 
eight pots of II. vittatum alone in bloom at the same 
time, the February preceding my visit. This same plan 
of flowering them during the winter has been revived 
again in our books within the last few years. They 
were also flowered in the winter by Mr. Sweet, in 
Colvile’s Nursery, more than thirty years ago. He, too, 
put them to rest by the end of May, shook them out of 
the soil, and placed them on high shelves in the stove, 
and compelled their leaves and roots to shrivel. In 
October, and on till Christmas, he had them fresh 
potted, as the flower-buds or leaves began to move. The 
stoves were kept much drier in those days than they 
are now, and the summering on the shelves of a dry 
stove was as safe as our wintering is now in dry mould 
in pots. 
Crossing Hipi>easters. —I never knew a Hippeaster 
that would not seed, and I never found one of them 
that would not cross with any other in the genus ; but 
they are much influenced by soils, and the kind of treat¬ 
ment they receive. Dr. Herbert said, that the pollen of 
a different kind would, with him, invariably subdue the j 
effects of the natural pollen, but I tried his plan for four 
years, with a great number of them, without verifying 
the same result in one single instance. The anthers do 
not open before the flowers in this genus, therefore 
there is no difficulty about the pollen, and all that is 
necessary, is to cut off the natural anthers before they 
burst, and apply the pollen from another kind; the 
seeds are ripe in about six weeks after that, and they 
should be sown the day they are gathered. 
Raising Seeolings. —Any light soil will do to raise 
seedlings in, and a hotbed is the best place. They are 
up in less than three weeks; and a month after that 
they are fit to be transplanted into nursing-pots. Some 
pot them singly into small pots, and give them three 
more shifts before they flower; but when one counts 
them by the thousand, or even a few hundreds, they 
become troublesome in single pots, as two-thirds of the 
best batch are seldom good enough to keep in a choice 
collection. The way 1 used to deal with them was to 
pot them into No. 32-pots from the seed-pot, putting in 
a row all round the pot, and just two inches apart, and 
never giving them any more room till they bloomed; 
and I have had them often so jammed together by their 
growth, that the bulbs were flattened on both sides, and 
I think that caused them to flower sooner; and I re¬ 
collect one year, in particular, I had about fifty pots 
