THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 8. 
452 
Slobs again (1001).—- Invite them to a feast, and betray them while [ 
they are at dinner. Mr. Bams found brewer’s grains the most enticing; 
he laid little heaps of it along the walks, and went out in the evenings, 
sometimes at night, with a light, and dusted them with lime. Fresh 
cabbage leaves dipped, one after the other, in a pail of greasy water— 
that in which a ham had been boiled in is best—and laid down in their 
tracts, is a temptation they cannot withstand; they cling to such leaves 
like bees. Now pick up the leaves, and carry them to somewhere and 
scrape off the guests, and do as you like with them. The leaves will do 
again two or three times. 
Geranium Cuttings (Ibid). —Had you been an old subscriber you 
would have learned, long ago, that the open border, and full in the sun, is 
the best place to root bedding Geraniums and all other Geraniums in ; 
and that glass frames, lights, and such helps, are only really useful in 
the hands of good gardeners and practical amateurs. You have been 
reading the best book only for thirteen months, and you expect your 
cuttings to look well 1 Where did you hear of shading Geranium 
cuttings in the summer, or autumn ; or of lowering the temperature at 
night for any cuttings whatsoever? It is only one in a thousand who 
can err in these simple matters. In future, put in your bedding cuttings 
when you can spare them, any time from Midsummer to the end of 
August, on a south border, in rows six inches apart, and three inches 
from one to one in the row, and as shallow as you can get them to stand 
firm. All through September such cuttings will do in the bottom of a 
cold frame, if there is glass at hand to put over them when the weather 
gets cold. Cuttings of Verbenas and Petunias must be put under con¬ 
finement, as they are soon shrivelled by sun or dry winds. October is a 
good time to put in cuttings, in a rough way, of bedding Fuchsias ; cut 
strong pieces six inches long, open a spit trench across a dry border, and 
place the cuttings an inch or so apart against the cut-side of the opening. 
Let full five inches of the cuttings be covered with the soil, and in hard 
weather, or before winter, mulch round them, or all over the border, with 
some short dung, and next May they will push up as strong almost as if 
they had roots when they were first planted. We know those, who, in 
October, 1822, were three days cutting common broom tops, about 
eighteen inches long, placing them round newly-planted young trees on 
a sandy bank, to save them from hares and rabbits ; the soil being sand, 
and recently trenched, the broom had to be thrust, well into the ground, 
and nine out of ten of the pieces rooted so firmly before next April, that 
it required a good pull to get them up. Five hundred kinds of plants, 
including apples, pears, and plums, &c., will thus root in a nice, moist, 
soft sandy border, if the winter is anything like mild, and every one in a 
thousand-and-orie may prove this next winter. 
Crossing (M. A.). —There is no treatise on the subject; but most of 
our books and periodicals now give explanations and directions on cross¬ 
breeding. The subject is not “ thoroughly understood” by any one ; it 
was practised both here and on the continent two hundred years ago 
certain, and some one let the secret die with him ; the “ great impulse ” 
is of recent date, comparatively. You shall hear something of it after 
awhile. 
Heating a Small Greenhouse (T. M.). —The house is nine feet 
by six feet, seven feet high at back, and three at front. It is to be heated 
to 55° in winter, and so as to have bottom-heat. It strikes us that your 
cheapest plan would be to have a small boiler, costing, with two flanges, 
and an iron-pipe about two feet in length, somewhere about £ < l. Join 
these iron-pipes with leaden ones, and conduct these into a tank, as wide 
and as long as you can make it convenient, made of deal, like a brewer’s 
cooler, some four inches deep, and covered with slate ; or run the four- 
inch pipes through a small chamber, and so as you can shut off or on 
atmospheric heat. In cither case, in severe weather in winter, if you 
do not give attendance late at night, you must be at the fire early in the 
morning. For the purpose you mention, such a heat would not be 
necessary until March or April; though, to be sure to have Achimenes at 
Christmas, or even after the end of October, you would want the heat 
specified. Is there no mode you could heat such a small house from 
the kitchen-range ? Of course position will determine that. 
Greenhouse and Stove under One Roof, with a Partition 
between them (A Learner). —You can do no harm in filling the pit in 
the hothouse with tan, in the middle of February. But, though that 
will greatly increase the temperature of the house, still it will not 
be sufficient to grow things generally requiring hothouse treatment, 
unless you give more fire-heat than will be necessary in the greenhouse 
department merely to exclude frost. If the same pipes pass through 
both, without stop-cocks, your only alternative is to give more heat, 
and then give more air to the greenhouse. 
Pruning Vines (Ibid). —Do this any time after the leaves turn yellow. 
If well mauaged on the spur system, you may safely prune to one eye; 
if at a! 1 doubtful, to two. 
Camellias Pot-bound (Ibid). —See an article by Mr. Fish last week, 
and also to-day. Do not give a large shift now, unless you can take the 
plant into the house, and keep it closish for a fortnight afterwards ; 
gently pick out the pot-bound roots, and trundle the new soil among 
them. If the plants are large, we would use manure-waterings, and 
shift next April or May, when the young wood was pushing; but a mode¬ 
rate shift will do no harm, if done early in September. 
Flow'er-beds (W. H. 0 .).—An entrance gate, between two nice lodges, 
opens on a level circle of gravel, or nearly a circle, with the front of the 
house just opposite the lodge-gate; in the middle of the gravel, and 
between the gate and the front-door, is an oval piece of grass, sixty feet 
long by thirty feet across, in the direction of the front-door. The car¬ 
riage-way, or “ coach-ring,” is all round the oval of grass ; but there is 
“ a short cut” between the lodge and the front-door—an eight-foot walk 
through the centre of the oval of grass ! We have often heard it objected 
to make two halves of a cherry ; but the idea of making two halves of an 
e gg> even of a grass egg, we believe never entered the brains of man till 
that very oval was cut through, giving one the idea of the parish fire- 
engine being kept in the house, for then, the shortest cut to get at it, on 
an emergency, is certainly the best, and across the grass. The owner now 
wishes to do away with the grass oval altogether, and to make flower¬ 
beds on the space ; and he inquires if it is in character to make stone- 
cdgings to the beds, instead of grass. This is a very good idea* The 
front flower-garden will be on gravel, as we gardeners say, and then it 
will be much better looking, and more in character, without turf-edgings 
round the beds ; box, wood, stone, slate, or Hogg’s tiles—anything, in 
short, is preferable to grass-edgings for flower-beds on gravel. Pray 
arrange the beds so that no one may pass from the front-door to the gate 
easier than round the outline of the beds. A convenient walk, or path, in 
such a place as this, is just as much violence to the principle of taste, if 
ever there was any such, as allowing a public path to run straight through 
a parish church. 
A Dealer Exhibiting. — A Looker-on says that a party who took a 
prize for ducks, at the Baker-street Exhibition, is a dealer. Before we 
say more, our informant must furnish us, confidentially, with his real 
name and address. 
Mangles’s Variegated Geranium (W. S.). —It is not unusual for 
this and other Geraniums to produce white leaves. In all probability, a 
change of season and change of soil will render the leaves of their 
original colour. Your Pansey seedling is very ordinary. 
Keracleum giganteum. — II. Y. W. wishes to know whether this 
plant is of any use, or is merely curious and ornamental ? We know of 
no use to which it has been applied, except that we have seen the stems 
employed as light poles for various purposes in garden work. It is pro¬ 
bable that rabbits, goats, and swine, would eat the leaves, for they are 
very fond of those of the common Cow Parsnip (Heracleum spondy- 
lium). The footstalks of this, and of the Siberian Cow 7 Parsnip (H. 
Siberirnm), are also peeled, dried in the sun, and stored in bags, in some 
dry place; they become very sweet, and are considered a great delicacy 
by the inhabitants of Kamschatka, &c. A strong spirit is obtained from 
the stalks. 
Club-root (G. Wafers). —This disease will not attack your Cabbage- 
worts if you raise the seedlings on a plot where they have not recently 
been grown; keep them well watered, giving liquid-manure made from 
soot occasionally, and sprinkle a little spent bark amongst them, and 
over the surface, between the rows, after planting-out. Slow growth and 
deficient moisture arc great promoters of this disease. 
Siiangiiae Fowls (E. W. M.). —The two first numbers of The 
Poultry Book contain full answers to all your queries. 
Poultry House (Poultry), —It would be impossible to give all the 
details for erecting one such as you require, without plans, &c. In the 
first number of The Poultry Book you will find these. 
Siiangiiae Hen (HI. A. B.). —There is nothing the matter with your 
hen. Let her remain on her nest for three weeks, for she is only broody. 
Her system requires a rest from egg-producing. At the end of that time 
shut her out from her nest, and in a few days she will again begin laying. 
Vine in Pots (A Reader). —Apply to Messrs. Hall, Virtue, and Co., 
Paternoster Row. The shoots cut back to tw r o or three eye3 will usually 
require no further pruning. 
Calceolaria Seedlings (M. II.). —They arrived in excellent con¬ 
dition. No. 43. Good form; rich mottled-crimson. No. 29. Too flat; 
colours confused. No. 10. Good form; crimson, with cream-coloured 
edge. No. 35. Too flat; straw-coloured, spaneled with small, crimson, 
kidney-shaped spots. No. 27 was crushed. No. 23. Too flat and small. 
No. 5. Form good, colour creamy, with large* regular spots of plum- 
colour; a very good flower. No. 15. Good form; very pale straw, with 
a few round spots of pink ; an excellent flower. No. 33. Too flat; creamy, 
with plum-coloured markings. No. 11. Yellow, with crimson, small 
spots. If No. 32 is a very dark crimson, slightly variegated with paler 
crimson, it is a very beautiful, good-formed flower. We say if, because 
the number was between that and two other flowers. 
Cooking the Vegetable-marrow (B. le B.).— How can we say 
which i3 “the best mode,” since, as Sam Weller assures us, “tastes 
wary?” It maybe boiled whole, and eaten as Asparagus; it may be 
boiled, and mashed like the Turnip ; it may be boiled, and served-up 
with white sauce ; and it may be made into soup, according to the recipe 
we gave for so cooking the Himalayah Pumpkin. 
Onion Weed (J. B. H.). —We have no experience of the efficacy of 
soaper’s waste in destroying this weed. We should do as you propose ; 
fork it out, and cover the places with salt so thickly as to destroy all 
vegetation. 
To CONSTRUCT A GREENHOUSE SO AS NOT TO BE A FIXTURE 
(S. 0. L.). —Let it be a span-roofed one, and the pillars of its sides 
merely fitting into sockets in the foundation, so that they may be moved 
as easily as posts for drying linen. Umbrella trellises will do for climb¬ 
ing Roses, or any other plant with long pendulous branches. 
Botany ( Medicus ).—We cannot undertake to teach the rudiments of 
sciences connected with Gardening and Natural History. There are 
series of papers which will probably suit you in The Family Tutor, now 
publishing in fortnightly numbers. 
Names of Plants (.7. 0. P.). — Achillea ptarmica plena. The 
prettiest of all the Achilleas. (A New Subscriber).— Cryptomeria Ja- 
ponica Lobbii is a dwarf. Your specimen is of Juniperus Vevoniensis. 
You may rely perfectly on Messrs. Veitch. (A Surrey Subscriber). —All 
the fruit crushed and fermenting. Three plants had no numbers attached. 
No. 1 appears to us to be the Magnolia conspicua. 2. Chimonunthus 
frugrans. 4. Spirwa Douglassii. 5. Spircea hypericifolia. 7. Sedum 
latifolium. 8. Taxodium distichum. No. 9 appears to us to be. the 
Cupressus sempervirens, and No. 11 the common Red Virginian Cedar, 
Juniperus Virginiana. The three without numbers, are as follows:— 
Andromeda floribunda. The other two without numbers ; are Rhodo¬ 
dendrons the smallest is the Rhododendron ferrugeneum, the other is 
R. dauricum. 
Error: No. 254, page 372 (W. X. Y.). —Your Trefoil is Trifolium 
elegans, not fragiferum. 
London: Printed by Harry Wooldridge, Winchester High-street, 
in the Parish of Saint Mary Kalendar; and Published by William 
Somerville Orr, of Church Hill, Walthamstow', in the County of 
Essex, at the Office, No. 2, Amen Corner, in the Parish, of Christ 
Church, City of Loudon,—September 8th, 1863. 
