276 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 5, 1861. 
from the kiln should be used. There is one way of bringing: up all the 
■worms to the surface on the instant, but it is dangerous, being a strong 
poison:—a lump of corrosive sublimate as big as a walnut, put into 
nine gallons of water, and when dissolved or melted, water the grass with 
it through a fine-rose pot, and every worm which it reaches will be up to 
the surface. We have, seen them come up as fast as the bees wnen 
swarming. Small lumps of this poison of the size of a filbert nut in a 
gallon of lime water answer most effectually. To unturf and lay fine 
■coal ash- s under the turf, is a very good thing in all strong land to 
keep the grass and the worms on satisfactory terms with the owner, and 
more especially if the lawn can be surface drained at the same time. A 
turf ha-ha is a poor thriftless way of spending- money, unless you had a 
military engineer to conduct the work. 
Prop agaxing-house and Cucumber-pit (X. 7 . Z .).~ From the smal^ 
sketch, we presume you propose dividing your house longitudinally into 
two pits, one iu front for Cucumbers, and the one next the back for pro¬ 
pagating. We presume also that you mean to train the Cucumbers over 
head above both pits. We would make the top of the brick pit level instead 
of sloping. That will give you more room for shelves, &e., if you desire 
fiuch a plan. Had you a strong flue, brick on bed, running through the 
bottom of your Cucumber-bed, and coming back, brick on edge, through 
the propagating part, you would have plenty of heat. If you made a 
rough chamber over the flue, and then had some wooden slides in that 
■chamber to open at will, you would do the same with two four-inch 
pipes going from the boiler through either chamber, and returning through 
the other. These would not do without the slides. If you wished to get 
rid of them, you had better take two pipes along the front for top heat, 
and rounding the other end divide the piping, taking one back through 
-the bottom of each bed. You can judge of the expense of piping and flue, 
when we say at 14 d. per foot, such piping at first would cost more than £5. 
A good little boiler and et ceteras and fixing, together with the amount for 
pipes, would be moderate at a dozen pounds. Pipes would be best 
ultimately. A greenhouse of such a size could be healed for some £8 for 
materials. The extra heat required demands more piping. We are 
supposing that you could do the most of the work without expense of car¬ 
riages. There will be no difficulty about heating the Mushroom-house, 
especially with boiler and piping.' If you had given us a rough plan of 
the place we might have advised better. 
Cuttings (A Beginner). —We think you c n better answer the question 
as to the number of cuttings than we can do, as we know nothing of the 
internal arrangements of your 12-feet-long-by-12-feet-wide pits. If every 
cutting was placed in the smallest 60-sized pots, you could soon see how 
many of these you could hold in a yard, and get at the result at once by 
■common multiplication. We generally keep our cuttings in a small room, 
either in pots or boxes, in winter—say one inch for a Calceolaria, half an 
inch for a Verbena, and one inch and a half for the smaller kinds of Scarlet 
Geraniums; but then we take means to thin them, or plant them out in 
■temporary beds by March, as otherwise they would smother each other. 
Giving each a separate pot and getting it established is the best plan for 
getting nice plants at the least trouble, but then you must give them more 
room. In such a sized pot we strike and keep <n through the winter 
from six to a dozen young plants, according to what they are. The weather 
was so open and mild before the frost came, that almost everything exposed 
to the frost where intense has suffered, and hardier things than Celery. 
We threw a little litter along the sides of the beds, and a little across the 
surface—leaving a good bit of foliage out, and, when the frost got sharp, 
placed spruce fir boughs along the rows ; and now, with the exception of 
the top leaves, ours is all tight and sound. Such lessons are the hard 
knocks of experience, that make us learn whether we will or not. 
A Cold Pit (A Devonshire Subscriber).— The shape of the house will do 
very well for what you propose ; but with the exception of the length, 40 
feet, and the hack roof to be hipped, we know nothing more of the con¬ 
templated size or contents. All that can be said of expense is delusive, 
unless the mode of building be taken into account. If made entirely of 
•wood and glass, as Mr. Rivers builds his orchard-house, his builder, I dare 
say, would manage such a house for about £40. If you go to brick walls 
you must pay more, and all that you have for ornament will cost just so 
much more. For something like that money you would have to use 
British sheet glass, what is called fourths at about Id. the foot; if you 1 
preferred thirds, it would be nearly od. per foot; and Hartley’s rough 
patent is from 3 d. per foot; and ribbed patent is we believe, more, and in 
proportion to weight and thickness. The above sheet is gla-^s about 16 ozs. 
to the foot, heavier will be so much more. Rafters for such a house should 
he three inches and a half by «ne inch and a half, and stand about twenty 
inches apart, to receive glass twenty inches by twelve inches. We think 
you would gain nothing by having the back hipped-roof slated. If you 
had no means of heating, the slate would be an advantage in winter ; but 
■unless you heated the house you could not keep the plants in it you specify, 
and, therefore, we would decidedly have glass there as well as in front. 
Most back sheds in gardens would be as cheap if roofed with glass, and 
then how useful for many things they would be. 
Twelve Fuchsias for Exhibition and their Treatment ( Young 
Beginner). —You are now three months behind time in preparing first-rate 
Fuchsias to win prizes in 1861, at any respectable exhibition on this side of 
Gandercleugh ; but here they are, six of the best whites, and six to match 
them from the reds 
Whites. —Queen of Hanover, Royal Victoria, England’s Glory, Clio, 
Silver Swan, Maid of Kent, or Fairest of the Fair, or Duchess of Lancaster, 
all good white kinds ; and Venus de Medici, a fine lilaey kind. 
Reds. —Souvenir de Chiswick, Wonderful, Prince of Wales, Prince 
Albert, Catherine Ilaycs, Emperor Napoleon, Charlemagne, Tristram 
Shandy. 
To win a prize worth fighting for, with a selection from all these beauti¬ 
ful kinds of show Fuchsias, one would need to begin at the end of October 
with plants nine months old, or such as were struck last spring, and did 
uncommonly well all that summer and autumn. At the end of October the 
pots should be turned on one side till the mould got as dry as March dust; 
then the plants to be cut back to the very collar, so as to get up one strong 
middle stem from the very power and centre of the roots, so as to look as 
like a Christmas tree as a Spruce Fir is to a Norfolk Island Pine. A 
specimen Fuchsia which has not a centre stem like such trees, and 
is not as equallv balanced with shoots from the rim of the pot as any 
Conifer in this world, and not to be under five feet high, orover eightfeet in 
height, is not worth talking about at a respectable society. After cutting 
them so close, shake off all the dusty earth and the dying small fibres of 
roots, but no more, and by no means cut their roots close as a Geranium 
roots. You want all the force of all the sap in all the roots to throw up a 
prodigious fine stem for the centre of first-rate specimen plants, as you 
are not yet so well up to the mark as first-class exhibitors with whom you 
may have to compete. If your plants are all ready, and you have twenty of 
them to stand for a dozen, in case of mishaps, by the middle or end of No¬ 
vember, and pot them into as small pots as you cun get their roots into with¬ 
out pressing them, for a first start, and the soil is good enough for a first- 
rate Geranium, you are all right. The next thing is a mild hotbed inside a 
house, to give them bottom heat the whole winter, and a temperature of 
about 60°, with air sufficient to keep them from drawing slender till the 
spring is on with sunshine to raise the heat to 80' 5 or 90° in the middle of 
the flay. As soon as one set of pots got full of roots there must he a shift 
till they are in their blooming-pots, and by the 1st of May the shortest of 
them should measure just fourfeet without the pot. Of course,if youarenot 
up to every little move in turning the plants round and round to the light, 
syringing when it is necessary, stopping side-shoots just at the proper time 
and joint, and looking after them in every way asa mother would watch over 
her first-born baby, someone will be sure to beat you after all; but if you 
make up your mind to win, you are almost certain to succeed; but you 
would need the head of a very first-class exhibitor, and all his means of 
doing them to succeed after being so late iu the field as the beginning of 
February. 
Manure for Potatoes (L. D. IF.).—On your light sandy soil manured 
with guano for preceding crop, soot, as you propose, will be a very good 
application. We should sow by hand on the surface, atthe time of the 
digging for planting, a mixture of fifteen bushels of soot and five bushels 
of salt per acre. If we could obtain shoddy at a moderate price, we would 
certainly try it as a manure for Potatoes. We believe it would he very 
successful. If you try it you will much oblige us by letting us know the 
result. The nearest woollen factory would be the place to obtain it from. 
Half a ton per acre would be a good dressing spread over the surface aud 
dug in. 
Pottf.d Vines in Orchard-house—Shifting Camellias (Peckham Sub¬ 
scriber). —We fear we forgot to notice the Vines in the cold orchard-house. 
They will do very well there in pots. Keep plenty of air on, and keep the 
plants as backward as you can. The plants will havethe advantage of those 
on walls, &c., Irom being covered with glass, which will enable you to increase 
the heat in autumn and keep off the heavy rains of that season. If your 
wood is all right there is no question of the Grapes doing well. The best 
time for shifting Cameltias is just as soon as fresh growth is taking place after 
flowering. Some prefer doing it after the shoots are set—thatis, just when 
stopped growing. Pruning when necessary should be done directly after 
blooming. If done severely, the plants should be placed in a nice, sweet, 
moist heat— say of from 60° to 65°, shortly afterwards. When the young 
shoots have pushed from half an inch to one inch is the best time to shift, 
if necessary. Camellias do not require that every year. We have had 
large plants that, making sure of the drainage, had nothing done to them, 
except lemoving a little of the surface soil and replacing by fresh, for from 
five to ten years. Ants are very destructive in many cases ou strawberries 
or Peaches ! Water with guano water, or throw it in their runs ; or mix 
arsenic with sugar and water, and place it so that ants only can get at it— 
and no pet animal you may have. 
Cutting Asparagus {A Plain Gardener ).—Let the shoots he six inches 
above the surface before you cut them, and then cut them just within the 
surface. Tbe only criterion of excellence is size, the largest being the 
best. When allowed to grow six inches high before being cut, the whole of 
that length is edible. 
Evf.rgref.ns for a Conservatory {J. N .).—A Norfolk Island Pine 
(Araucaria excelsa), is the most noble of ail our evergreens to plant under J 
the dome of a large conservatory, and Camellias are by far the best kind 
of plants to place against the back wall of such a fine conservatory ; and in 
these days money can furnish such plants of Camellias as will be sufficient 
to cover every brick of the twelve-feet high wall in one week, even ii the 
wall were as long as the Houses of Parliament. If there are cross-tie 
bars in the roof, a climber might be planted just under any or all such sup¬ 
ports and between the Camellias ; such climbers, ultimately, to run up the 
back wall by a single stem, and branch off at the top of the wall, and after 
that the pruning to extend no lower than the top of the wall; the front • 
border of such a conservatory being reserved for the more refined or more 
delicate climbers. This back border with strong loamy soil for the 
Camellias, will he best fitted for the more rapid growers and more robust 
climbers — say Tacsonia mollissima, Passiflora of sorts, as Billottii, a 
very strong grower, Clowesiaua and Campbellii, three hybrid half-hardy 
Passifloras. 
Plants for Conservatory Pilasters [T. Jones ).—For the roof, we 
would advise Mandevilla for the centre, Passiflora coerulea for one end, 
and coerulea racemosa for the other, the latter having a reddish-purple 
colour. For the pilasters the following will do well:—Billardia longiflora, 
crimson; B. angustifolia, cream coloured; Kennedya Marryattffi, scarlet; 
K. Comptoniana, blue ; K. monophylla, purple ; II. nigricans, dark purple ; 
II. inophylla, scarlet; Brachysema latifolia, scarlet; Podolobium scandens, 
yellow; Jasminum volubile, yellow; Sollya lieteropliylla, S. angustifolia, 
blue. Plant in equal portions of heath soil and loam, and give some 
silver sand in the soil about the ball when planting them. 
What may be Grown in a Vinery (A Garden Labourer ).— You may 
grow Peaches on the back wall if the Vines are grown and pruned on the 
spur svstem, and are not nearer each other than four or five feet. You 
will have to study what Peaches and Vines require, and will be obliged to 
get fair crops of each to make a compromise between the two. Either one 
or other in the house would enable you to treat either one better; hut good 
crops of both are often obtained. Of course, if you have shelves on the 
hack wall, that would prevent you having Peaches there ; but you might 
have the back wall clear for Peaches, and suspend shelves from the rafters 
for Strawberries—say one five feet from the back, and another four feet 
farther down. Whether a stage, or pit, will depend on what you want. 
Whether you have stage or pit, if you have Peaches on the back wall 
neither should be above 3 feet or 3J feet in height, or you will shade the 
hack—in fact, if you grew tall plants in the house, they too would shade 
the back wall. If you had plenty of fermenting matter —such as tan, tree 
leaves, and dung, &c., the filling the pit with these would enable you to 
