322 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 
seasons; and no leaf has the power of digesting food 
for itself, or the bud which accompanies it, much 
less for the general secretions of the parent plant, 
until it has first attained a certain age. That age is 
very different in different plants, and no greater boon 
could be rendered to gardening than to shew at what 
age the leaves of the principal plants—grown either 
for their fruit or for their flowers only—have attained 
the proper age to digest or elaborate food. The best 
time to “ stop” the shoots of a given plant would 
then be certain, and not so liable to misuse as at 
present it is under the management of inexperienced 
persons. To be on the safe side of the question, 
however, we advise a general stopping of all plants 
late in the autumn that do not produce terminal 
flowers, that is, at the end of the branches. Theory 
sanctions this practice, “because after that season 
newly-formed leaves have little time to do more than 
organize themselves, which must take place at the 
expense of matter forming in the other leaves,” as 
Dr. Lindley has said somewhere; therefore, stopping 
plants at this season, or earlier, is a sound practice, 
and will enable plants to ripen much better, and I 
need hardly remark that no exotic plant can be got 
too ripe in our climate, and also that the more ripe 
a plant is the less damage it can receive from close 
confinement in our pent-up greenhouses during our 
long winters; therefore, check all tendency to late 
growths by nipping off the tender leaders. Young 
heaths, epacrises, acacias, and such like hard-wooded 
plants, are particularly improved by this practice, 
and as nurserymen never think of this treatment, 
and would rather show you the health and vigour of 
their young valuable stock by pointing to the active 
growth of their plants next October, the sooner you 
buy in such things as you may wish to possess the 
sooner you can put a stop to this growing system. 
Another extraordinary delusion is this—that late 
autumn growth encourages the extension of roots, 
and that this is beneficial to the future welfare of the 
plant. This absurdity has almost obtained public 
belief in the rising generation of gardeners. In the 
first place, we have seen that the quotation above 
from Dr. Lindley goes to prove that late autumn 
growth has hardly time to “ organize itself;” how, 
then, can it organize roots at the extremity of the 
system ? But supposing that it could do so, for the 
sake of argument, what then? Does the mere exten¬ 
sion of roots add to their power of absorbing mois¬ 
ture from the soil? Not a bit of it. The true mode 
of increasing the power of the roots would be to cut 
off the young points of every one of them, if that 
could be done, as early in the autumn as the points 
of the shoots are nipped off; then, with the natural 
heat of the season, and the power of the old leaves, 
which alone can influence the formation or extension 
of roots, new roots or mouths are soon formed from 
the cut end of the roots, and from new side roots 
called into existence by the stopping of the points. 
These new mouths extend more or less, according to 
the warmth of the season, the strength of the old 
leaves, and the porosity of the soil, and they are 
ready in the spring to suck up powerfully, according 
to their number. Artificial warmth will accelerate 
the extension of roots long after all the leaves have 
dropped off" in the autumn. Make a hotbed in Octo¬ 
ber over the roots of the ash, elm, or vine, or, indeed, 
over the roots of any plant, and the roots will grow 
on to Christmas as if all the leaves were in full acti¬ 
vity. This I have seen over and over again, and 
nothing is so familiar as deciduous plants making 
roots without leaves when placed in bottom heat, to 
say nothing of all our Dutch bulbs now making roots 
abundantly in the absence of leaves ; therefore, stop¬ 
ping the late autumn growth does not prejudice the 
extension of the roots, neither do the late formed 
leaves add much to the power of the roots. 
Any woody plant, fruit-trees, and all that are un¬ 
healthy, are very much encouraged by being pruned, 
or stopped, early in the autumn ; and, on the other 
hand, plants that are too luxuriant to produce much 
blossom may be reduced in strength by allowing 
them to grow on as late in the autumn as they will, 
and not pruning them till late in the following spring. 
The reason seems to be this: when we stop a shoot 
in the autumn the ascending sap, though now getting 
sluggish, has still sufficient force to fill up the re¬ 
maining buds, and the more full and ripe the buds 
are in the end of the season the stronger they will 
break in the spring; but if this rising sap is per¬ 
mitted to expend its force in the formation of new 
wood and leaves late in the autumn, the lower buds 
are left weaker than in the former case, and conse¬ 
quently their force is less active in the spring. 
By the foregoing rules we regulate the growth and 
flowering of many greenhouse plants, particularly 
climbers; we cause the rampant growers to expend 
themselves in growth, as it were, and so compel them 
to flower more freely, and a large crop of flowers or 
fruit will bring down a strong plant sooner than all 
the pruning in the world, because it expends a large 
share of the organized juices or digested food. Yet, 
if there were any truth in the doctrine that late growth 
added force to the roots, the contrary effect would 
have been produced, so that a given system may be 
right, although the explanation of it be otherwise; 
and it was a shrewd advice of fSir Matthew Hale’s to 
recommend a country justice of the peace to decide 
cases which came before him to the best of his judg¬ 
ment, but never to assign his reasons, for the decision 
might be right, but the reasons for it had many 
chances of being wrong. 
Liquid Manure .—The most mischievous popular 
error of the present day, however, and one w'hicli the 
correspondence of The Cottage Gardener has 
proved to be of a widely-spreading influence, is the 
supposed virtues of liquid manure. A grass-plat is 
brown and thin of herbage, a dose or two of liquid 
manure brings up the grass thick and strong; a pe¬ 
largonium, or fuchsia, is also not of the right colour, 
owing to some defects at the roots, and liquid manure 
is supplied to recruit the vigour of the plant, but the 
crippled roots either refuse the dose or their derange¬ 
ment is aggravated by the application. Another trial 
is made, but matters get worse and worse. “ How 
is this? What will feed the goose should also feed 
the gander, but here it turns out to be otherwise; we 
must write to the Editor of The Cottage Gardener, 
he is so obliging, and he knows everything”—(of 
course he does, all editors do)—“ but wo must send 
him full particulars—four pages, at least—for fear he 
should miss a hit.” Poor Master Editor reads on 
and on until he comes to the P.S., where the pith of 
this long story lies. He answers, “ the dose was too 
strong,” and this is more puzzling than ever. “How 
could a dose which restored the tender blades of grass 
to health and beauty be too strong for a large fuch¬ 
sia? He must have misunderstood the letter, or 
else he is—no matter what.” Not so fast, however. 
Liquid manure is the most powerful food that can be 
given to plants, because it contains most ammonia, 
and to feed plants that were impoverished through 
insufficiency of food in a poor soil should be a very 
different thing to supplying the wants of a plant 
