444 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 18. 
which come up from dews, rains, or natural moisture 
in the earth, never want watering at this season, or 
very seldom indeed. 
There is another point against seedlings which have 
been forced to come by artificial watering; their being 
thus fed, as well as forced by hand, they are more deli¬ 
cate, and therefore less able to stand the frost, than such 
as have sprouted more naturally, and came on under 
less excitement. The practical value of knowing all 
this at the present moment is this:—If a good fall of 
rain does not come before this is published, let all seed¬ 
beds and rows have a good watering or two, and let not 
the surface get quite dry again till October is out, and 
all the flower-seeds which will vegetate this autumn will 
be up and sure by that time. In places where self-sown 
seeds never do well from the effects of the winter, I 
would not water them on any account, let the soil be 
ever so dry, till Christmas: .the drier the better, and the 
fewer seeds that vegetate before the New Year, the better 
also, as then they will not vegetate much till they are 
out of harm’s way. ■ Last year, by a constant excite¬ 
ment, 1 made the seeds of Dielytra speciabilis vegetate 
out of season, just before the snow came on, and the 
packet of seeds of it which I received last July was 
sown at once, and the pit was watered for a month, and 
was kept in a warm place during the trial; but, seeing ; 
no likelihood of the seeds vegetating this autumn, I put 
the pot down to the rim in the open border, with a good 
opening under it for draining off' the water; and to save 
it from all accidents, I put a pot over it upside down, 
with its rim firmly fixed in the ground, so that no rat or 
mouse, or grub or caterpillar, can get to the seeds; this, 
therefore, is the safest plan to adopt with all hardy seeds 
which lie dormant during the winter, and which are 
known to require a long time to lie in the ground be¬ 
fore the time for sprouting. Suppose you were to try 
some Rose seeds of your own saving; it is best to have 
them in the earth as soon as they are gathered, and 
better to be in a pot, or a seed-pan plunged, than in the 
open border, because a bed or border might become un¬ 
fit for them, from remaining so long unstirred. It is easy 
to forget such seeds, too; and some one might dig or hoe 
the place just as the seeds were on the move below the 
surface; but when it is carefully sown in a pot, or pan, 
and is covered over, like my Dielytra seeds, it escapes 
all accidents, and the pot, or pots, may be removed from 
one place to another, if any digging or alterations are 
to be done where they are plunged. The natural damp¬ 
ness of the soil will be sufficient moisture for them till 
the seedlings appear above ground. 
Suppose, again, that one wanted seedlings of Portugal 
Laurels, or of the common Laurel, to make standard 
plants of, we know the seeds would not do if they were 
kept dry till the spring; that is, if they did grow it would 
not be before that time twelve-months; and we know the 
hazard of sowing them at once in a piece of open 
ground, as they do in the nurseries with pecks and 
bushels of seeds; for all that a private amateur would 
venture on could be put into a couple of good sized 
pots, till the seedlings were two or three inches long, 
when they might be shaken out of the ball, and be planted 
in a row anywhere near at hand, where they would be 
under the eye of the owner and not likely to be forgotten. 
Then, if proper care were taken of such plants from the 
beginning, and no shoot, except the leader, was allowed 
to grow more than six inches without being stopped, 
such plants, in time, would make the finest standard 
Laurels in the world; but a long time must intervene 
bel'oro they are high enough for an avenue ; and, there¬ 
fore, are proper subjects for children’s experiments. Let 
a boy or a girl gather a few handfuls of the berries, say 
of the Portugal Laurel, when they are quite black, then 
sow them with his own or her own hands in a pot or 
two, have them plunged to the rim in a damp, shady 
border, as I say, and put bigger pots over each of them 
to keep all harm from them, till the seedlings begin to 
appear above ground, then to remove the empty pots; 
afterwards to transplant, to prune, and take all manner 
of pains to get a free growth out of them for the first 
few years,—depend upon it, when the boy is a man, or 
when the sister is married, she would prize a half-dozen 
of such standards as much as a wedding-dress. Just 
think of her Majesty planting such and such trees, where ! 
she has been, to be a memorial of the visit in times to ! 
come ;—why, that is as feathers compared to the weighty j 
matters here set forth. After this, therefore, whenever 
you read in the “Dictionary,” that such and such seeds 
do not come up till the second year, just think of how 
easily they might be made to grow by this plan in a few 
months; and though you might never want to try the 
plan yourself, it is well to know it, that you may tell it 
to some friends who may be right hot on the subject. 
AUTUMN CUTTINGS. 
Some Pelargonium cuttings, which I put in the open 
ground at the end of last July, when the ground was as 
hot as English ground ever was in our times, had put 
forth a few small roots by the end of the eighth day 
after they were put in. A row of cuttings of Flower of 
\ the Day, which were put in the day after the St. Swithin 
rain had ceased, made very creditable roots in twenty 
days: so that this Pelargonium is not at all so bad to 
strike as many people believe; but the whole secret is 
in putting in the cuttings during the first ten or twelve 
days of August. I put in some of them every ten days 
since, on purpose to see the difference, and I cannot 
help wondering how some people can put off their strike 
of this, and a few more of the like constitution, till it 
is too late to work them without some slight additional 
heat. I hold it as a firm principle, that no Pelargonium 
which is liable to take hurt from a long winter, as this 
one is known to be, should ever be propagated in heat 
in the autumn, but only in the open border, and the 
hottest border about the place; the border in front of the 
greenhouse is as good as any; but a Peach border, or a 
Vine border, would do. 
I have tried another experiment, this last August, with 
cuttings of this very plant, the Flower of the Day. I put 
in a row of cuttings of it across a four-feet bed, and 
about four feet from a south wall; the cuttings were as 
close together as they could stand ; the soil of the bed 
was so dry and powdery, at the time, that I could hardly 
make the cuttings sufficiently firm to stand against the 
wind; also, there were six of the cuttings not longer 
than a quarter-of-an-inch, being merely bottom buds, 
just started; and, would you believe it, they had not had 
a single drop of water at the time, nor for fourteen days 
after. The sun played hard upon them meantime, but 
they never flinched in the smallest degree; even the 
little bud-cuttings stood it like the rest of them. I may 
as well, however, tell, that a lady, who took more pity on 
them than I thought necessary, put in a row of boughs, 
six inches high, in front of them, which broke the 
rays considerably. There were two things meant 
to be proved by this experiment, and one thing 
which must be clear to every one who takes a thought 
on the subject;—the one thing was, the placiug the 
cuttings across the line of the sun, so to speak, 
which gave every one of them an equal chance to 
harden, from not being in the shade of one another, or 
in the shade^ of anything else. This hardening, or 
ripening is, of all others, the most advantageous condi¬ 
tion for an autumn cutting; it prepares the youngest 
slip, so as to make it able to endure as much hardship, 
in winter, as an old plant. Just give it a single thought, 
and you will see the advantage as plain as we did by 
this experiment. You ought, also, to resolve in your 
own mind, as we did on that occasion, never to allow 
