September 
part may be left undone; and also new or proper 
labels need not be provided till the first bad weather 
will stop out-door work. It would also give a neat 
finish to the whole if a slight covering of fresh soil 
were put over that in each of the pots, first seeing 
that the old soil is uniformly moist, and then, with a 
fine rose, to give a slight shower over the foliage, 
earth, pots, and all. If the stages, glass, paths, &c., 
are clean and dry, and you allow the plants to get dry 
also after this preparation, there is no reason why 
they should not do very well for along time; and the 
only other point which occurs to me at present is this, 
that, as soon as plants are “ housed,” the watering 
should henceforth, for the winter season, be done early 
in the day and never in the afternoon, for reasons 
which must be plain enough to any one who has 
hitherto read The Cottage Gardener. Another 
very wise plan at this season would be to look out all 
greenhouse or half-hardy plants that have been grow¬ 
ing out of pots in the open garden, and such of them 
as are intended to be potted again, or even to be taken 
up to shelter from the frost, and to be secured in sheds 
or cellars, should now have their roots gradually pre¬ 
pared for the change, as I have remarked on some 
weeks since, by cutting a portion right through with 
a spade. Besides the advantage of making more sure 
at the time of taking up such plants, their growth in 
the meantime is checked, therefore they will ripen 
the young wood better; and, if they are late flower¬ 
ing plants, such as scarlet geraniums (they are not 
pelargoniums, at any rate), and the soil is rich and 
damp, they will now make more leaves and shoots 
than flowers, but by a little curtailment at the roots 
this disposition is reversed. In the case of half-hardy 
shrubs in the open borders, which are to be potted or 
even protected where they stand, a little cutting of the 
roots would now be very useful to them, and also a 
regular pruning all over the branches, cutting back 
the softest part of the tops. Seedlings of these plants 
when turned out in the open soil have a natural dis¬ 
position to ramble away late in the autumn, and if 
this is not checked in time no one can keep them 
over the winter. 
Scarlet Geraniums are often taken up, carefully 
potted, and put in the shade for a week or ten days, 
about the end of this month, and when they do well 
that way continue their bloom for some time, and 
are very useful in the greenhouse. This cutting off 
the roots previously to their removal would almost 
insure success. I have heard of people putting 
these and similar plants into a close hothouse as soon 
as they were potted from the borders, to make them 
root the faster, as they said; but the truth is, although 
they may root freely enough, the sudden shifting will 
assuredly injure their bloom for the rest of the season. 
Every one regrets the loss of favourite specimens, 
which grow too large or cannot well be removed after 
they are once planted out; but with a preparatory 
cutting of their roots and top branches they may be 
preserved for years. 
A section of the scarlet geranium called Nosegays 
will bear a smart forcing in February and March, if 
they are now properly prepared, so as to be ready for 
their flowering pots by the end of October. Plants 
of them two years old answer best for forcing, but 
any healthy plants of them now growing in the bor¬ 
ders may be so managed as to come into bloom before 
the middle of April with a little spring forcing. 
Their roots are not to be cut at this stage, but all 
their side branches and their leaders must be cut 
close, not leaving more than a couple of eyes on any 
of them. As the Nosegays are a tall, long-jointed 
• 311 
race, and without close pruning you can do little 
good with them, in a week or ten clays after they are 
thus cut a host of young branches will spring up 
from all parts of the stems if the plants are old, and 
as soon as their leaves are about the size of a shilling 
is the proper time to remove them from the border 
to be potted, and the process is only a repetition of 
that to tall pelargoniums. Their roots are shortened, 
so that at first potting they may be put into small pots, 
and kept close for a while to encourage new roots. 
This close forcing, which I have just condemned in 
the case of large plants with their full complement 
of leaves, roots, and flower buds, is highly beneficial 
when all these are either in a great measure wanting 
or in a crippled state. As soon as the first pots are 
full of roots the plants are repotted into larger ones, 
but at that late season only one size larger; and the 
third shift, if not the second, should be their flowering 
pots, but that depends on the size of the plants, and 
the facility with which they will rest. They should 
be kept at greenhouse temperature close to the glass, 
and be regularly watered through the winter. Early 
in February let them be brought into a forcing pit, 
but a good hot kitchen window would answer the 
purpose, provided that the plants were wintered in a 
cold pit. 
Frequent Repotting. —None of us have yet ex¬ 
plained why it is that gardeners do not put such 
plants into their flowering pots at once, and so get 
rid of the trouble of frequent pottings, but here it is 
at last. If we were to put a pelargonium into a full- 
sized pot after its roots were shortened, the young 
roots would all work out to the sides of the pot, and 
then coil round and round in the usual way, so that, 
whatever the size of the pot and ball might be, the 
roots are feeding in a great measure only on the out¬ 
side of the ball; whereas, by the use of small pots 
and progressive shifts, the roots must be at work in 
all parts of the soil. Country readers will under¬ 
stand this better when I say that folding sheep on 
turnips is like planting in the small pots, and both 
the fold and the small pot are shifted as soon as their 
respective contents are appropriated. Yet the far¬ 
mer’s sheep and the gardener’s plants would get on 
very well without folds or small pots, but it would be 
■wasteful in both instances ; yet, for all that, you see 
at lambing time the shepherd allows some of his pet 
ewes to roam over a whole turnip field at will, and 
the gardener does the same with pet plants by what 
he calls a one-shift system-. Many plants, however, 
cannot stand such good feeding; they soon take a 
surfeit. 
Forcing Bulbs. —The earliest of this class is the 
Double Roman narcissus, and, very fortunately, it is the 
easiest to manage of the family. Any light soil will 
do to grow it in, and the usual way is to put three 
bulbs into a 6-inch pot, or two in a 5-inch pot, and a 
dozen of such bulbs may be had for three or four 
shillings. After potting give a good watering and 
set the pots in some out-of-the-way place, where the 
heat of the sun cannot reach to stimulate the bulbs 
to make leaves before they have made roots, for that is 
the grand secret in forcing all kinds of bulbs. The 
pots should be at the least half filled with roots be¬ 
fore you can see the bud of leaves, so to speak, in the 
centre of the bulbs. This Double Roman narcissus 
is a famous one to root fast, therefore, as soon as you 
see the roots working down freely into the mould in 
the pot, you may take the pots to a kitchen window, 
if no better convenience is at hand. Indeed, I know 
of no better place in which to force these hardy bulbs 
than a good kitchen window facing the sun. If their 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
