July 18.] 
from a genuine variety could be sent to me by post at 
the same time, it would be a good way of convincing 
me how far I have been wrong. There are, or were 
some years since, two sorts of the plant I want—one 
with the open part of the llower light blue all round, 
| and the bottom a deep dark blue, and the other, which 
is the best, is dark blue all over; but seeds from either 
I can hardly be depended on if a tall larkspur of a dif¬ 
ferent colour is so near that the bees, or the wind, can 
carry the pollen dust from one to the other. Others, no 
doubt, have some favourite flowers difficult to keep, or 
to obtain true from seeds, and so the temptation to save 
seeds under one’s own eye goes the whole way round the 
circle. I believe it to be a natural law that, if plants 
are divested of their seed-vessels as fast as the flowers 
begin to fade, they will keep much longer in flower 
than is natural to them. At any rate, there is no ques¬ 
tion about the soundness of the principle as far as the 
generality of flower-garden plants are in question, there¬ 
fore, from this time to the end of the season, seed-vessels 
or pods should be looked on in the same light as weeds. 
When a head, or a bunch of flowers, falls off or fades at 
once, there is very little trouble about the matter—the 
stalk is cut, and there is an end to it; but in others, as, 
for instance, Scarlet Geraniums and Lupines, some of 
the flowers die away, and the seed-vessels stick out like 
beaks or bean-pods long before some of the flowers on 
the same stalk are ready to open, so that it becomes a 
tedious and a delicate operation to keep a bed of these 
scarlets free from seed vessels. Of all the scarlets that 
I have seen, Compactum and Shrubland Scarlet are the 
two most free from forming seeds; but both have 
another failing just as bad, for the flowers in the 
centre of their trusses die away, and are decayed, or 
mouldy, before the outside flowers are ripe enough to 
open; therefore, to keep a large bed of any of this tribe 
in first-rate order, they must be looked over every two 
or three days, and the dead flowers, or the seed-vessels, 
cut out carefully with a sharp knife or pah' of garden 
scissors; and the best scissors for all garden work that I 
have seen are those sold as Turner's Garden Scissors, 
which are manufactured by Mr. Turner, of Neepsend, 
Sheffield. They cut clean, like a good knife,—not a 
bruised cut as by the common work-basket scissors. 
We grow many Lupines here, and our rule is to cut off 
the whole spike of flowers as soon as one-third of its length 
is faded at the bottom—an extravagant way, certainly, 
and might be improved on by taking hold of the top of 
the flower-spike with one hand, and rubbing off the 
I bottom pods with the other; indeed, any way of saving 
i the flowers, and at the same time the seeds, is a good 
plan. Writing about lupines, reminds me that we had 
a new one last year from a friend, of which kind we 
have a good stock this season, but it has hardly got into 
seed catalogues yet. ft belongs to the tall section of 
annuals to which Lupinus mutabilis is referred, and 
might betaken for mutabilis or Crqokshankii before it 
comes into bloom; but the colour is very different, being 
jrartly cream colour with a pinkish shade; we had it 
tor a real pink lupine, but it is not so in reality; never¬ 
theless, it makes a good marked variety, and lasts—like 
its relatives—till overtaken by a smart frost. These tall 
lupines are not grown half so much as their merit de¬ 
serves—I mean the annuals of the mutabilis section; 
and from this time to the middle of August is the best 
- time in the year to sow them, for one particular purpose, 
which is, to flower them as single specimens out on the 
I grass—one plant in a place, three plants in another, and 
! so on, as one might choose ; or if a bank or large bed of 
i them were planted like dahlias in such princely places 
as Chatsworth or Windsor Castle, the effect would be 
magnificent; but to have them in a sober way for 
more ordinary situations, a dozen of them got up 
now, or soon, and half starved in little pots singly 
237 
through the autumn, would take up no more room 
in a dry pit or greenhouse than so many verbenas in 
single pots; and as soon as they began to move in the 
spring to be potted, and so encouraged to grow on and 
to be repotted once or twice more before the time of 
planting them out in May, they would become large 
bushes, such as one could hardly believe who has not 
seen the mode tried. Where there is head-room, one or 
two plants of them might be grown very large, just to 
see what good cultivation could effect before the time of 
planting them out; and should they even be coming 
into flower as early as the first of May, there would be 
no danger of their ceasing to bloom down to the end of 
October, particularly if their seed-pods are kept down. 
I should not be surprised to hear of a single annual 
lupine reaching the height of ten feet, and full and 
bushy in proportion; but for so large a plant, a very 
sheltered spot should be chosen, as a heavy wind would 
have great power on such a mass of succulent shoots 
and thin foliage. For common ordinary use they are 
not sown till the end of March, like other annuals. 
The second great temptation is about making cuttings 
from choice geraniums. This is just the best time of the 
year to make cuttings of the whole race of flower-garden 
geraniums; but now that they are only in fine bloom 
after a struggle for existence, it seems hard to take off 
any cuttings yet. To have a fine stock of healthy plants, 
however, long before the winter sets in, we must begin 
to jmopagate early. Here we use as many geraniums 
as most people, and more kinds of them than any other 
place in the country. My catalogue of this class of 
geraniums contains 87 names, and I shall add half a 
dozen more to them this season. We also keep a pro¬ 
pagating book, in which every plant we bed is entered, 
and the number of cuttings that are required is put 
after each name. These numbers are altered every 
season—except a few of what we call stock-plants— 
to suit the arrangement of the planting next season. 
Our first stock-plant of geraniums is our own scarlet 
seedling called Punch, and of it we annually root five 
thousand cuttings. This is the greatest number we strike 
of any one sort, and it is very seldom we put cuttings of 
these kinds of geraniums in pots, unless it is a very 
delicate or a rare sort which we can ensure better that 
way. The whole are rooted in the open ground, and 
full in the sun, and the hottest day in the year will not 
hinder our propagation when we once begin, and we 
never shade a geranium cutting. The vine and peach 
borders are generally the propagating beds, and it is a 
good old plan to put a slight coat of some light rich 
compost over these borders in July, when most of the 
liberal waterings are over for the season. The borders 
being first stirred with a fork to the depth of two or 
three inches, and then a couple of inches of the mulch¬ 
ing compost is added. The whole is then raked, and 
the usual alley is marked out near the wall, and the 
place is ready for the cuttings. You begin at one end 
of the border, and plant the cuttings in rows across it, 
two inches between every cutting, and six inches be¬ 
tween the rows. When two or three rows of cuttings 
are thus planted, and you see from the propagation 
book how many cuttings of that sort are to be struck 
this season, you can calculate what length of border 
will hold the whole of them; then measure off that 
length of the border, and then begin with the next kind, 
and so on for the whole collection, and by the time the 
propagation is finished, every sort will be found by itself. 
Besides the look of the thing, this is by far the best 
plan to ensure a systematic course of management. 
When a gardener first begins to propagate, the chances 
are that he cannot get more than a tenth of the number 
he requires, aud not even that of many varieties, there¬ 
fore, if he were to plant the first crop of cuttings in 
close succession on the bordor without leaving inter- 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
