142 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, December 11, 1860. 
beginning of June, being plunged in the open ground up 
to the rim, and a larger pot turned over them and 
pressed a little into the earth to keep off intruders. If 
the bottom of the top pot had been knocked out and a 
iece of glass had been set on it instead, that would have 
een the best contrivance I know of for very many 
things, and for cuttings from June to September. But 
so it was; and the seedling Cyclamens began to break 
ground by the beginning of August—last August twelve- 
month, and they have been green and growing ever since 
to the entire satisfaction of the man who did them that 
way for the first time. lie repeated the same experiment, 
or I did it for him, last June with seeds of Atkinsii, and 
they were up in just four weeks ; but being six weeks 
under the pot-cover before they were looked at, they 
were drawn up very spindly, and they may have sprouted 
in less than four weeks, but at present they are all on 
their right legs. 
Now read Mr. Bird’s way of doing them, I mean the 
great Chrysanthemum grower at Stoke Newington. But 
first of all let me say that I calculated his stock of 
Cyclamens to amount to fifty thousand plants, of which 
twenty thousand are one-year-old, or rather six-months- 
old seedlings, twenty thousand from the crop of 1859, 
and ten thousand ready for sale, ail in fours, in 48 
and 32-sized pots — that is, at the age of two years, 
or this first potting off from the seed-pans in pots four 
medium bulbs in a No. 48-pot; and all the roots above 
mediums he puts into No. 32-pots, and also four in each 
pot, and lie sells them all on the wholesale principle at so 
much a thousand. But you or I shall never know his price 
for a thousand of these most bewitching flowers ; for he 
sells them all to the trade, and what the trade leaves on 
his hands go to Covent Garden Market at the current 
price of that same season. I had to beg my way to be 
allowed to make known ttiese statistics, but Mr. Bird 
acknowledged that his customers, a certain number of 
nurserymen, were liberal men, and had no interest “in 
■keeping any mortal thing a secret.” 
Now, his way of raising Cyclamens beats my way all 
to brickdust. He, too, knows and did act on the phi¬ 
losophy of the thing for ever so long, about the bread-and- 
butter-and-japi-over-all way of sowing the seeds, to gain 
a year over the old school. 
Instead of the) inverted pot over a seed-pot plunged in 
the ground for four summer months, he places his seed- 
pans at once in heat, and on bottom heat, if you can call 
so a spent hotbed, and he has hi3 persicums all up in 
one month—just at less than one-half the time mine took, 
and in proportion they are now so much better and finer 
plants than my seedlings. Then you may book Mr. 
Bird’s plan as the best to pay, and mine as the next best 
to pay in a very different way—pay for the pleasure of 
doing a thing ten times better than ever it was done 
before, at neither cost nor trouble at all. 
But before I leave Dan for Beersheba, allow me to say 
that I discovered another thing to pay in a way I did not 
at all think of. I found lots of some different kinds of 
Chrysanthemums in a forcing-house; and although the 
fog was a yard thick, and no sun in the three kingdoms, 
the glass stood just at 75° of heat—10° too hot at the time 
for a fox’s brush, HCndes, or Saccolabium, or anything 
else from the jungles of India; and yet these very 
Chrysanthemums seemed to be just in their element, and 
in a few clays were to take the shine out of foreign or 
domestic travellers, whether from here to Mesopotamia 
or to Middlesex, at the incoming competitions at Stoke 
Newington. How and why that was is thus to be 
accounted for. 
No matter how the seasons go, or at what time of the 
month a show is proclaimed, if one has the practical 
knowledge that he can force his flowers up to the very 
day, they must show more freshness and prime beauty 
than if they had to stand in a cold back shed for ten 
days to keep them back to meet a show which must be 
held ten days after they were out of prime. The sorts 
which were in this strong heat of 75° were lots of Plutus, 
of Yellow Perfection, of Aregina, and of Nonpareil. But 
there are a few others with hard centres which will stand 
a considerable degree of heat to get them to open and 
expand finely. Golden Lotus is one of these ; and in 
December will need some extra heat to bring it up to the 
mark. 
For two long vineries with young Yines of Black Ham¬ 
burgh the borders were all made on the surface of the 
natural soil, the place being too low to allow of a level 
border in the usual way. A sewage stream ran at a short 
distance from the Vine-border only a few inches below 
the natural level of the ground, and a “ drip” drain, or a 
shallow cutting, at the front of the Vine-borders led into 
the open sewer. The borders were not more than eight 
feet wide, and stood at a sharp angle against the front 
wall of the vineries, and will be widened by degrees as 
the roots occupy the whole of what is now laid for them. 
This mode of giving an annual, or a biennial, or a triennial 
assistance to the roots of Vines is one of the best prac¬ 
tices of the present day. It was first recommended by 
Mr. Ayres some years since, and is fast extending. I also 
saw the plan was adopted in the garden of Sir Joseph 
Paxton this autumn. 
The last practical move I had seen at the Frampton 
Park Nursery of Mr. Holmes was the manner he winters 
his stools of Chrysanthemums, in order to get a sure crop 
of cuttings from the best suckers early in the new year, 
and before the great battle for striking the bedding plants 
commences in the spring. He had a bed of light rich 
soil made over a hot-water tank in a long run of deep pits, 
and here he planted the balls in rows across, six inches 
apart, and the balls only three or four inches from one 
another. The balls were well watered before planting, 
and very little more will they need till he lets heat into 
the tank in January, if the suckers do not come up fast 
enough for his purpose. A very slight degree of top or 
bottom heat suffices for the purpose. The propagation of 
this important branch is got through before the rest of 
the spring work begins, and a stock of good, sound, 
valuable stuff is thus obtained at little trouble or cost. 
None of these great growers of Chrysanthemums take 
cuttings from the grown plants unless it be some rare 
and very scarce sort which is likely to be much in 
request; and no matter how early in the year the cut¬ 
tings are rooted, provided the young plants are kept 
quite cool all through the spring. But for private use 
the middle of April is considered sufficiently early for 
making such cuttings, and the best cuttings then for 
making specimen plants with are the best top suckers 
from the balls, with a couple of inches at the bottom of 
each, with ready-made roots to them from the balls ; 
to put each in a 60-pot, and to allow it to form a cramped 
ball of roots before any of the eyes can break, or the 
leading bud rises a joint from its first length. All 
this requires the plants to be kept as cool and aired as 
possible up to the middle of May, or even later ; then to 
one-shift the whole of them into the blooming-pots at 
once, to have the pots exceedingly well drained, to give 
them nothing but soft pond or rain water till the flower- 
buds are seen, and never to stop a single shoot the whole 
season, but to keep leaders or stronger shoots in check 
by merely bending their points till the rest are up with 
them, and to have an eye on all side shoots, so as to nip 
them off as soon as you can pinch them, unless it be in 
June, w hen one of them here and there may be required 
to fill out the shape of the plant. That is the essence of 
the present practice of the best practical managers. 
On the other hand, Mr. Bird assured me that all that 
has been said and done about striking those sucker 
shoots in the autumn and very early in the spring was 
“ mere bosh.” There is yet a deep-rooted philosophy in 
the bending of shoots which you have not yet heard of, 
and it is this:—When you are bent on taking a first- 
