258 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
August 
THE KITCHEN-GARDEN. 
The season is now arrived when every nook and 
corner of the garden should be planted with some 
useful article for winter and spring consumption. 
Sloping banks should be formed in all convenient 
situations, as not only will more surface ground he 
obtained in this way, hut the soil will thus become 
well mixed and pulverized, and be well prepared for 
future crops. These banks have also a neat and 
rather ornamental appearance. 
Coleworts should now be planted abundantly, as 
well as Savoys, where ground can be spared. If any 
variety of hales or kitchen vegetables are left in the 
seed bed, they should be planted thickly out on 
banks, and they will be found very useful in late 
winter and spring. If not required for family use 
they will be most valuable to those who keep either 
a cow or a pig; and, if not needed for either of these 
purposes, they will yet come in usefully for trenching 
down as manure in spring for succeeding crops. 
Swede Turnips. —The present month, as well as 
the month of September, will be found the best time 
for transplanting this useful vegetable. We have 
had some practice in these matters, and find, from 
experience, that the Swede turnip always seems to 
thrive best when transplanted out about the size of 
an egg. The size may vary from the egg of a pigeon 
to that of a barn-door fowl. The roots or bulbs do 
not at that size suffer from moving, but start at once 
into growth, having sufficient nutriment at that 
stage to support both foliage and fibre. We last 
year planted a large piece of ground, after wheat, 
with Swedes, which produced by December a heavy 
crop of fine bulbs : the crop was then drawn, topped, 
and stored in ridges, covered with straw and earth, 
and also thatched, affording good food for boiling 
for the pigs and other stock until midsummer. This 
season we have made the same preparations for 
planting another large piece of ground as soon as 
the wheat is carried. We lay the bulbs in after the 
plough at about two feet apart each way. This crop 
by being cleared and stored is off the ground in good 
time for trenching and ridging in readiness for such 
other crops as mangold-wurtzel, carrots, or parsnips, 
and thus allows the ground to be left vacant during 
the last part of the winter season, so that it may 
become sweet, healthy, and well pulverized by the 
time it is again required. The advantage of sucb a 
system of cropping is very great to those who are 
able to clear away their crops of second early pota¬ 
toes, or who have any other spare ground in their 
gardens which they can form into banks, where this 
excellent bulb, the Swede turnip, may be transplanted. 
We ourselves adopt the plan in our gardens, and 
obtain plenty of large-sized bulbs, as well as an 
abundance of early spring greens. 
Leeks should still be sown in succession, and the 
last sowings of cabbage and spinach made. Make, 
also, successional sowings of the hardiest kinds of 
lettuce, as previously recommended. Onions to stand 
the winter should now be sown, and those that were 
sown last spring may be bent gently down with a 
pole without bruising, and as soon as they are ready 
for harvesting lose no time in clearing them away, 
manuring the ground, and ridge-trenching it up into 
sloping banks, for planting the main crops of early 
spring cabbage, the plants of course being first 
pricked out and prepared strong for the purpose. 
Not an inch of soil, we repeat, should now be left 
uncropped for the winter, when all productions may 
be turned, in one way or the other, to good account 
by a little management and forethought.—J. Barnes. 
MISCELLANEOUS INEORMATION. 
MY FLOWERS. 
(No. 39.) 
Evergreens may be increased by cuttings, and 
in this month we may begin to make them. Showery 
weather is always the best in which to effect this. 
The soft and fertilizing nature of rain, and the cor¬ 
responding coolness of the atmosphere, is far more 
favourable to cuttings or slips than all the water or 
shade we can afford them, under a hot sun, or during 
the continuance of dry weather. I know how inter¬ 
esting all garden operations are, and how anxious 
we are to begin them; but if we can only be patient, 
we shall gain more time, and save many more of our 
little charges, by waiting for suitable weather, than 
by hurrying them into dry soil the moment the 
proper month arrives, and deluging them with hard, 
unreffesliing water. Many of my readers have, no 
doubt, remarked the different appearance of their 
window plants, however carefully they have been 
watered in-doors, when placed upon the lawn to re¬ 
ceive the summer shower. What real enjoyment 
they seem to feel! for there is such a susceptibility 
in plants, especialy as regards the rain and the dew, 
that it may almost be called feeling. How good 
would it be for us if we thus received and rejoiced 
in the “ doctrine” that drops “ as the rain,”—the 
“ speech” that distils “ as the dew, as the small rain 
upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the 
grass.” 
Choose a shady border for evergreen cuttings, and 
do not cut them very small. I believe I have often 
failed in cuttings of roses and other plants by 
making them too short, and perhaps choosing shoots 
that are too small. The larger they are, provided 
the wood is of the proper age (that of the previous 
year), the more sap and vigour they will possess, 
and therefore the less likely to weaken and die off. 
Evergreen cuttings should be about eight inches 
long. Strip the leaves from the lower half of the 
cutting, and place it deep in the ground, pressing 
the earth firmly round it. I always keep cuttings in 
water for two or three days before planting them. 
I fancy they gain vigour by imbibing moisture freely 
before!)and; but this is very possibly an ignorant 
idea, and they might do equally well without it. 
Evergreens are such useful additions to a garden, 
and are so invaluable as screens and shelter in a 
thousand ways, that a nursery of them would be 
very convenient, if a space can be spared for the 
purpose; and we could then quickly carry out any 
little fanciful idea, or fill up an unavoidable opening 
with little loss of time. In a fit of caprice, some¬ 
times pardonable in our garden affairs, 1 have found 
great comfort in a spare laurel or two. By popping 
them into a needless pathway, or on the site of an 
unnecessary flower bed, the face of things is changed 
at once, and the desired effect rapidly obtained. I 
think that if cottagers could set apart a small space 
in their gardens, when tolerably extensive, to rear 
young fruit trees or garden shrubs, they might make 
a few shillings in the course of the year by disposing 
of them. In villages far removed from nursery gar¬ 
dens, such a plan might prove useful to many, who 
could not conveniently obtain such trees, and would 
be but little trouble to the cottage gardener himself, 
and a source of some trifling profit. Evergreens do 
not like a chalky soil—they will not grow richly in 
it; they love a strong, stiff soil, and will even do 
well on gravel; indeed I know laurels that grew on 
gravel escape a frost that killed those in other 
