THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
July 
210 
but bo an honour to you as a good and careful cul¬ 
tivator of this fine flower. T. Appleby. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Seeds and Cuttings. —About the end of July, and 
beginning of August, every one who can command 
a window, or a pit where the sun can reach it in 
winter, ought to sow the four following kinds of 
seeds: Cinerarias, China primroses, Calceolarias, and 
Mignonette —all of them for flowering next spring; 
and, even if part of them are lost in winter, the 
money loss would be but trifling. Rearing seedlings 
from cheap packets at all times, and particularly in 
winter, is one of the very best exercises for learning 
household gardening. To water plants when they 
are grown up, to stake, prune, and shift them as they 
need it, requires more forethought and judgment, it 
is true; but the nicety—the finger-work of garden¬ 
ing—can only be acquired by a good long practice 
with seedlings. Therefore, if for no greater aim 
than this, I would strongly recommend as many 
seedlings to be kept over the winter as circumstances 
will allow. 
Those who begin now, and soonest, will have the 
best chance, as their seedlings will be in good trim 
before the winter. Gardeners keep sowing their 
seeds till very late in the autumn, but it is not at all 
a good plan, although sometimes unavoidable, as in 
the case of geraniums and others, which have been 
crossed late in the season, and of which the flowers 
must be seen before much room is allowed them, as 
often not one out of a great many is worth anything. 
If such as these were not got into the soil before 
the end of this season, they would not have sufficient 
time to show their characters next summer; and, if 
they were to be kept over the winter unproved, they 
would eat their heads off, as they say in the high¬ 
lands when the winter feed of their stock exceeds 
the value of many of the animals. 
I would advise for all small seeds like these to 
have the pots well watered before the seeds are 
sown in the summer, or early in the autumn. In 
the spring this is hardly necessary, but now, unless 
the soil is well moistened before the seeds are put in, 
the heavy watering necessary to damp it through 
will be apt to displace and injure small seeds, which 
ought to be covered but very slightly. When seeds 
vegetate at this season they grow away rapidly, 
therefore they should not be thickly sown, because, 
if they are, they get so crowded before they are fit 
for transplanting, that one half of them are injured 
so as to make it very difficult to rear them. 
We all know by this time that small pots are 
better than large ones to rear seedlings in, and also 
that seedling plants are safer the sooner they are re¬ 
moved from the seed pot after they are in the first 
or second rough leaf; and when they happen to get 
crowded in a seed pot, as sometimes they do, even 
after they are sown thinly, by the watering wash¬ 
ing them to one side of the pot, it is best not to wait 
for their coming to full transplanting size, but to 
take them up in little patches with a flat pointed 
stick, and so place them in the new pot—say half a 
dozen in a patch. This will effectually prevent their 
getting injured, as they may have plenty of room 
given them. All that is necessary is to place the 
little colonies on the surface all round the pot, and 
then fill up between them with light sandy soil, and 
then a gentle shower from a watering-pot will estab¬ 
lish them comfortably. The great secret in garden¬ 
ing, as I have often said, lies in a small compass, 
and such minute attention is the lower and best 
stratum of it. 
The mignonette, however, must be taken out 
of this classification, as it does not transplant 
readily. Sow it exactly as recommended for tree 
mignonette, and, after it is well up, thin out three or 
four times, leaving only four or five at equal dis¬ 
tances to come to maturity. 
Petunia Seed. —As these flower freely the same 
season they are sown, most people prefer sowing 
them early in the spring, and that is the safest time 
for them. There used to be a good old plan of 
sowing many hardy annuals in pots in the autiunn, 
and keeping them over the winter in a greenhouse, 
or very dry pit, to be transplanted singly into small 
pots early in the spring, and, by another shift or 
two, to be made nice bushy plants, to flower a month 
or six weeks before the same sorts came into flower 
in the open ground: a month hence would be time 
enough to sow such seeds. I have never done much 
of that sort of gardening myself, but I well recollect 
having seen, many years since, specimens of good 
gardening that way, and useful flowers reared for very 
little trouble, and I notice it now to invite others, 
who may have still followed out the plan, to supply 
a list of such annuals as they found best to answer 
that way, and any details of management which 
their own practice may suggest. No doubt hundreds 
of short rules of this kind might be collected, and 
be of great use among amateurs, though it is often 
difficult to know where to stop when one begins to 
write about flowers. 
Cuttings of a great many plants will now strike 
root easier than at any other season. A hand-glass 
or two, in a north aspect, and a bed of light sandy 
soil, with a slight covering of sand on the surface, 
would turn out many useful cuttings in five or six 
weeks. Cuttings made in the old-fashioned way, by 
slipping them from the old wood, thus leaving a heel 
to them, will root more surely, although they may 
be a longer time about it, than such as are taken 
from the young tops and merely cut across under a 
joint. But the latter mode is the less trying to a 
young or scarce plant from which but few cuttings 
can be got. The soil for these cuttings should first 
be watered, and then pressed down tight, so that the 
cuttings may be firmly set with a small stick or 
dibber; and when the whole is finished off, a gentle 
shower from a rose pot should be given to settle 
down the surface smoothly. After this they should 
be left to get partially dried before the glass is put 
over them, which will prevent the leaves from damp¬ 
ing or getting mouldy, as some of them will be sure 
to do, more or less, by this close confinement. 
Therefore they will require to be watched and looked 
over once in two or three days; and when any damp 
or dried-up leaf appears, it must instantly be removed 
to prevent the mischief going any farther. As often 
as the soil appears dry a gentle shower ought to be 
given, but very little water will suffice to keep the 
whole in a uniform moist state. As soon as cut¬ 
tings under such treatment begin to make fresh leaves, 
it is a good sign that roots are formed, and now a 
little air must be admitted by putting a prop of some 
sort under one side of the hand-glass, sufficiently 
high to raise it up a couple of inches or so, and this 
had better be done for the first week only at night, 
letting down the glass next morning. This will 
inure the plants by degrees to stand more and more 
