Jff.t 
388 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, September 22, 1857. 
from disease and kept in great vigour for the ensuing 
season. Orel* ripeness, then, is the great moving cause 
of the disease. I have repeatedly proved this, and in con¬ 
firmation I may mention that in the lower parts of York¬ 
shire, on the banks of the Humber, there is a large flat 
of land named Marshland. It is not, however, a marsh, 
but a deposit of alluvial soil that has been collecting for 
ages. On this land, some thirty years ago, the farmers 
cultivated a fine variety of Potato named the Red- 
nosed Scotch Kidney , and most excellent Potatoes they 
were, being “ a ball of flour when well cooked.” It is a 
proved fact that this variety would not grow more than 
two seasons. The growers were obliged to send all the 
way to the Highlands of Scotland for fresh seed. In 
that region the frost comes early, catching the Potatoes 
in full growth and greenness; consequently the tubers 
were in an unripened state, and when planted in the 
low, warm soil of Yorkshire produced most excellent, 
sound Potatoes. The cultivators, however, allowed them 
to ripen fully, and the usual consequences took place 
the year following, namely, small crops of unsound 
Potatoes. At this day, I believe, that excellent variety 
is quite extinct. New varieties have superseded it, not 
because they are better, but because they are younger, 
and bear for a while better the absurd treatment of 
excessive ripeness. If I am right in this doctrine of 
over ripeness the remedy is easy. Let the cultivator 
make up his mind how many he will require for plant¬ 
ing next season, and take them up when fully grown 
whilst the tops are green. 
Let us look at another fact. The Early Ash-leaved 
Kidney is, perhaps, the oldest variety now in existence. ( 
If this variety is allowed to remain in the ground long 
after it is ripe it is ten to one but one-half of the crop is 
diseased. The sound ones are kept for sale, or to plant 
at home the following season, and then the disease 
attacks them earlier. Again, they are spread out on 
a border or gravel walk to, as they term it, green , from 
which practice I could never see any benefit. It only 
has a tendency to cause them to sprout earlier, long 
before they can be planted. Those sprouts must be 
rubbed off, and thus the plants are weakened to the 
last degree. 
I once tried the following experiment on this very 
variety :—I took them up whilst the tops were green 
and the skin would rub off easily. Knowing they were 
not ripe I placed them, directly after lifting up, behind a 
north wall, and covered them with soil a foot or more 
thick. They were examined occasionally through the 
winter, but no symptoms of premature sprouting appear¬ 
ing, they were left undisturbed till the March following. 
I had a south border about nine feet wide. On this 
border a quantity of half-decayed leaves were spread 
and dug in. The Potatoes were taken up, and planted 
on this border at three feet apart between the rows, and 
a foot from set to set. All small sets were given to the 
pigs, and none, though ever so large, were cut. They 
came up strong and healthy, and were in due course 
earthed up in the usual way. The consequence was a 
most extraordinary crop of larger than ordinary-sized 
Potatoes, and all as sound as possible, whilst many of 
our neighbours had theirs much diseased. 
This disease is not so modern as some think. I have 
known it for upwards of twenty years, though never so 
prevalent as in the year of famine in Ireland. I well 
remember seeing a long heap of Potatoes in Cheshire 
many years before that in as badly a diseased state as 
any I have ever seen since. 
The whole of my ideas as to remedying or preventing 
this disease may be summed up in a sentence or two. 
Let new varieties be raised from seed, and always keep 
a stock of half-ripened tubers to plant the following 
year. Old varieties, such as Ash-leaf Kidney, treat 
similarly. Let different persons in different parts of the 
kingdom try my practice, and let the results be published 
in The Cottage Gardener. 
Mr. Errington in Cheshire and Mr. Robson in Kent 
are as likely persons as any I know to carry out this 
experiment; but let me beg that my instructions be 
carried out to the letter, and I have no fear the result 
will be not satisfactory. T. Appleby. 
KEW GARDENS. 
Since this time last year they have made a great 
improvement in the plan of the promenade garden 
along the great central walk up from the old con¬ 
servatory to the lake. They have also improved the 
design for the terrace garden in front of the large Palm- 
house conservatory. This is the first step—the prin¬ 
cipal difficulty and the grand secret of flower gardening. 
To make a correct plan, according to the style of a 
flower garden would render flower gardening as simple 
as kitchen gardening is to most people. Every ono 
seems to understand in a very short time how much of 
his kitchen garden should be devoted to this or that 
vegetable. A very small space for Potatoes, a large area 
for Onions, and a much larger piece of ground for Chives, 
Garlic, or Shallots, would soon teach the most ignorant 
that such cropping is not the best or most profitable; 
and he would thus see the necessity of learning the 
exact quantities of ground, the “beds” for each in¬ 
dividual crop, according to “the wants of the family,” as 
the prevailing taste or the style of flower gardening 
requires such and such disposition of beds and colours. 
A man who did not know kitchen gardening or the 
“ wants of a family,” although he might be a very good 
planner, could hardly miss making mistakes in a plan 
for cropping a kitchen garden; and the best planner 
among our gardening artists would be just as liable to 
make mistakes in the plan of a flower garden, unless ho 
understood flowers and the style of planting them at 
the time. 
The original plans for the terrace garden and the 
promenade garden at Kew showed at the first glance 
that the designer was not a flower gardener; but 1 must 
add that I learned that day for the first time that the 
promenade was not intended for a flower garden when 
it was planned, but for some sections of Conifers—a 
genteel arboretum and fruticetum on a new plan ; and a 
most effective plan it was too, throwing allied families 
into distinct and distant groups on each side of the pro¬ 
menade, with two connecting lines running through on 
both sides from end to end—a splendid and quite a new 
idea in landscape gardening. They had most in¬ 
dustriously tried to reconcile this plan to flower garden¬ 
ing on the promenade principle year after year, and 
every season showed more clearly than the last that the 
plan was irreconcilable to that style, or any recognised 
style, of flower gardening. At last they gave it up, altered 
the plan completely, and made a vast improvement. 
The “distant and distinct” groups each consisted of 
three beds in the line of the walk—a circle, an oblong, 
and a circle again, as at the Crystal Palace, with an 
additional circle at the back of the centre of the oblong 
bed ! What this last circle was meant for no one ever 
made out, or could make out; and no wonder, for the 
designer meant it, and all the rest in that row, to be 
one of the connecting lines of the fruticetum, in which a 
relative shrub, or low tree to the rest in the group, 
should be planted. His second connecting line runs in 
the direction of the centre of the beds. The “ vast im¬ 
provement” is this: the back row of flower-beds is now 
converted to its original purpose—no flowers there, but 
an upright or fastigiato shrub in each circle, and the 
“ distant ” groups being connected into one whole by 
introducing similar groups between them. 
