May 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
107 
EXTRACTS FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 
As one of your inducements to conducting sucli a 
periodical as The Cottage Gardener must be a de¬ 
sire to promote the happiness of your countrymen 
and your countrywomen, it may gratify you to know 
that it has been the main source of amusement, 
external interest, and even occupation, to one who 
has had live months’ nearly solitary confinement to 
a sick bed and room. It may seem an extravagant 
assertion (to those who have not experienced it) that, 
all pegged down towards the rim of the pot, some¬ 
thing like the spokes of a cart-wheel, the earth stirred 
and a little fresh added. I sometimes have occasion 
to stop in the case of small weak plants, such as I 
should get in new from the nurseryman. In this 
case, I just pinch out the very tips of the tops, to 
bring out the lateral shoots as quickly as I can to 
cover the surface of the pot with shoots. I am very 
careful in easing down the shoots, so as not to break 
them off, as some of the sorts are very much more 
brittle than others. Sometimes a peg wants to be 
eased, and sometimes another or two want to be 
added. When the shoots have assumed the height of 
six or eight inches all round the rim of each pot, 
(the centre standing open,) I take from eight to 12 
sticks—I mean full length flower sticks—and stick 
them in all round among the shoots, and tie the shoots 
down close to the rims of each pot, stir the earth, top 
dress, and the work is done. When the shoots get up 
again about the same height, by the same rule they 
are all tied down, and if any shoot should rise up 
from the centre it is brought down to the side with 
the others. I continue doing this work—that is, tying 
down, earth stirring, top dressing, and taking away 
any dead leaves—up to the last week of September or 
thereabouts. At the next tying I introduce as many 
more sticks as are required to make my plants hand¬ 
some, filling up the centre and sides as nicely as I 
can, at the same time finding out the best front of 
each plant, and putting the name there as a mark, as 
I never turn the plant either to the right or to the 
left after this tying. At this tying, the plant can be 
trained as handsomely as the person who tics it has 
taste for such work. The shoots having been kept 
down all the summer are now at command, and any 
number of them, or even all, can be untied, and the 
shoots so placed as to run up either stick. The plants 
may want to be looked over once more and tied up ; 
and should any stick be too long, cut off to the regular 
length at this last looking over. I am always very 
careful not to injure the leaves. 
Watering. —I am always mindful about this. I 
never let the chrysanthemum ask for water; and I 
water well when I water at all. I never use manure- 
water until the flower buds are all well formed, and 
then I feed them all I can. 
Varieties. —I am mindful as to wliat sorts I grow 
for specimen plants. The following is my list to grow 
this year, 1849, in pot and on the wall:— 
Whites : Coronet, Vesta, L’Ange Gardien, Orion, Fleur de Marie. 
Reds: Madame Poggii, Compte de llantzan, Due de Carnigliano, 
Theresa, Phidias. Pale Pinks : Bride, Dutchesse de Montibello, 
Minerva, the Queen and Queen Victoria, Marquis. Purples: De 
Crequi, Princess Marie, Pilot, Campestrone, Louis Philippe. Yel¬ 
lows : Annie Saulter, Superb Clustered Yellow, Temple de Soloman, 
David, Marshal Soult, Adventure, Queen of the Yellows, Queen of 
the Gipsies, Incomparable, Mirabile (redish), Formosum (cream), Ce¬ 
lestial (pink), Flechier (purple). 
The flowering pot I use is 12 inches deep and 13 
inches diameter at the top. The plants, when full 
grown, from 18 inches to two feet high. 
Thos. Weaver, 
Gardener to the Warden of Winchester College. 
next to religion, the thoughts, to say nothing of the 
practice , of gardening have most power to soothe and 
sustain under the pressure of either anxiety, grief, 
or illness; nevertheless, I have found it so, and this, 
and the kind notice you take of queries as trifling as 
mine, are the only claims I have on your attention. 
Now that I am permitted to pay a few minutes’ visit 
to my humble greenhouse, I am reminded of several 
past and present difficulties, which, with your advice, 
I have more hopes of conquering than while con¬ 
fined to sending down written directions to a la¬ 
bourer, who, though he can manage a kitchen-garden 
by rule-of-thumb, has no knowledge of flowers or 
their needs. 
I never succeeded with any certainty in raising 
cuttings of the most easily struck plants even, till 
about four years ago I had a peep into the interior 
of a pitful in a professed gardener’s ground. Since 
that time my pots of growing cuttings of petunias, 
salvias, &c., look more like pots of healthy drilled 
seedlings than anything else. My plan is as fol¬ 
lows:—I drain the pots (as on all other occasions) 
with potsherds or cinders enough to hide the bottom 
of the pot entirelg, then dry moss enough to hide the 
potsherds, slightly pressed down. I then fill the 
pots with very sandy soil ; for verbenas I put an inch 
of plain sand on the top; I then gather my shoots all 
with a terminal bud, if possible; then water the pots 
with a fine-rose watering-can, very thoroughly; by 
the time I have trimmed my cuttings to an eye to 
shoot from, and one to root from, from which the 
bases are cut away, and below which the stem is cut 
clean through, the water has drained from the pots 
enough to leave a surface which will admit of my 
tiny hopes being stuck into it like pins into a pin¬ 
cushion. Each pot, when taken up to the potting 
board to receive the cuttings, is put down again into 
a fresh dry spot, to permit all the water that can to 
drain away; they are then put into the cucumber- 
bed, if at work, or into a cold pit and shaded. My 
greenhouse is so dark and damp, that I always strike 
my main stock in June, and secure strong established 
plants before housing, so that I have a supply of 
cuttings to give or use all the summer from the 
pinched off tops, which I continually deprive my 
young plants of to make them bushy. 
A very good economical substitute for sea-hale pots 
are empty butter-kegs, furnished by the grocer at 6d 
each. They will also take the place of hand-lights 
to turn over a patch of gladioli, or other half-hardy 
things that it may be desirable to protect from rain 
during the winter in the open ground. 
I see that “ Marianne” is told her Gentiana cicaulis 
does not flower because the soil is too light and too 
poor. My own are the finest I have ever seen, and 
had never done well till I have planted them the last 
four years in a bed of almost pure sand. I try to imi¬ 
tate the snow covering they would have in their native 
home in the winter, by laying over them, during 
that season, enough sand to cover all but the points 
of the shoots; all spring and summer I water copi¬ 
ously when not a very wet season. I shall certainly 
try the rich soil, as I am anxious to propagate them 
as rapidly as possible; but, while I grew them in 
peat, and afterwards in a rich tenacious loam, they 
never shewed a bud, and have never failed since I 
gave them even a slight admixture of sand. Some 
friends in Scotland, who have a gravel walk of near 
100 yards long., edged with G. acaulis, have told me 
that they never spread into the borders, while on the 
side next the walk they increase so luxuriantly that 
they are obliged to be kept in order with the garden 
