August 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
2ft7 
tliem all round the side of the pot, not in the middle , 
and if you have plenty of cuttings place them so that 
the leaves will just keep clear of each other and no 
more; about an inch will be deep enough to plant 
them if they are made firm. 
After they are all in give the pot a gentle shower 
to settle the surface soil all round the cuttings; place 
them in a shady place for the first fortnight, or, if 
you have a hand-glass or a cold-pit, either would do 
very well for them till the middle of October, but 
after that a kitchen window would be the best place 
in which to winter them: here they would need to 
be watered twice a week, and by the time they made 
an inch or two of new wood they would be ready to 
be changed iuto single pots. To do this properly, 
let the soil get rather dry ; then turn out the ball on 
a board or bench, and give it two or three gentle taps 
with your fingers, turning it round and round all the 
while, by which the dry soil will crumble away with¬ 
out breaking the young roots. Place them now 
singly in 3-inch pots, in any good light compost, for 
young myrtles are not very particular about soil; 
and if you have no hand-glass, you must keep them 
ten days in a close shady place till they take to the 
new pots, and after that you can do anything with 
them. 
There are no plants nicer for a window in winter 
than a couple of these myrtles—a broad-leafed and 
a narrow-leafed one for contrast; and when they 
begin to get too large you may prune them as freely 
as a gooseberry or currant-bush. In the growing 
season it is a good plan to nip off the tops of the 
strongest shoots, which will cause them to make 
more side ones, and so keep the plants bushy. If 
you want to make standards of them (and they look 
well that way also), all that will be necessary is to 
let the top grow away without stopping it, and all 
the side branches that it would make for the first 
three years to be stopped at the first or second joint, 
as I said about the tree mignonette, for on no ac¬ 
count must a single side branch be cut off close till 
the top has attained the required heightlx. When 
the top shoot is high enough, nip off the point of it, 
and three or four, or half a dozen, of the shoots im¬ 
mediately below the leader may be left to form the 
framework of the future head. To manage a stan¬ 
dard myrtle is exactly the same thing as that of a 
dwarf bush. Whenever the head begins to look too 
open it is a sign that some of the branches want 
pruning to make more wood, whether the plant be a 
dwarf or a standard, and it is always a good plan, as 
I have already said, to keep nipping off the points of 
the strongest and longest branches all through the 
growing season. They like a good generous compost 
and plenty of water when they are good-sized plants, 
and a little liquid manure will give them a more 
glossy dark green if given about twice a month in 
summer. 
Although, like most other plants, myrtles require 
little water in winter, they must never be allowed to 
become quite dry like fuchsias and scarlet geraniums. 
When they are of full age, all the heat they require 
in winter is merely to keep the frost from them. 
As an encouragement to others to grow myrtles, 
I may mention that here we have many fine large 
plants of them, some so large, indeed, as to require 
the strength of ten able men to move them about in 
then tubs; and about eight or nine years ago Sir 
W. Middleton brought a dozen standard myrtles 
from the continent, with stems four feet high : their 
heads are now four or five feet in diameter; they 
blossom every autumn, are grown in dark green tubs, 
and altogether are really most beautiful plants. They 
are all of the narrow-leaved sort, and I find that 
they are best for making standards, as they grow so 
much closer than the broad-leaved ones. 
When myrtles are old enough to bear seeds, they 
ripen a quantity every year, and that is the easiest 
way to increase them. Seeds sown in the spring, 
and placed in a cucumber frame, would by this time 
have produced nice little plants, but they would 
grow very well with the heat of a common window. 
Now, no doubt many of our readers will think it 
strange that I should be so particular with such a 
common plant as a myrtle, but I take more pains 
with such subjects than with others of a higher 
grade, for we must never lose sight of the fact that 
we have undertaken to teach the alphabet of garden¬ 
ing, that the best gardener in the country did not 
know so much at one time, and that there are thou¬ 
sands annually entering the lists who must begin at 
the beginning or else be mere dabblers for the rest 
of their lives; therefore, although many good gar¬ 
deners derive some instruction from our simple nar¬ 
ratives, as for myself I seldom lose sight of the 
import of an inscription which was engraved on the 
mantel-piece of the schoolroom where I once was 
taught: it ran thus, in Latin, “ Mild cepi, hoc loco, 
doctrinam juventutis,” which, may be thus para¬ 
phrased—“ In The Cottage Gardener I have un¬ 
dertaken the instruction of the uninitiated.” 
D. Beaton. 
HOTHOUSE DEPARTMENT. 
Strawberries for Forcing. —Inquiries thick and 
thickening are coming respecting the means to be 
taken for the forcing of this splendid fruit. Where 
there is, with the editor and contributor, the desire to 
oblige, it must be the subscriber’s own fault if he does 
not meet with the information he peculiarly wants, 
so far as it is possible for limited knowledge to supply 
it. One thing he may rely upon, which is that if we 
cannot help him we will candidly confess our inability, 
and not mystify him witli a roundaboutism which 
merely ends and leaves matters exactly as they were. 
The strawberry is propagated by seed and by runners. 
The first method is seldom resorted to, unless by 
hybridizing, to produce new varieties, and for the 
cultivation of the alpine kinds, which generally fruit 
best when raised from seed. The general method for 
propagating approved sorts is by runners, which are 
freely produced from healthy plants, one plant being 
the progenitor of several generations of such descend¬ 
ants, if it is robust in health, and the weather during 
the end of summer and beginning of autumn should 
be cloudy and dripping. I would explain the process, 
but an examination of the plant would be more inte¬ 
resting. 
It will at once be seen that the runner performs 
much the same office for the strawberry and kindred 
plants that the scape or the peduncle performs for 
the fiower of other stemless plants, only that in the 
strawberry a perfect plant is formed, true to the va¬ 
riety, from the runner, while, with some exceptions, 
we could only expect the species, not the identical va¬ 
riety, from the seeds. The strawberry, therefore, and 
other kindred plants present some analogy to that 
part of the animal world that is both viviparous and 
oviparous; the runner having some likeness to the 
former, and the fruit and seed to the latter mode of 
reproduction. 
