226 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 12, 1858. 
get dry for a single day or niglit: and a tliird point is 
one on which the generality of gardeners put very 
little stress—namely, the best yellow loam nuEngiand. 
is not considered sufficiently rich, or too strong, to 
force and grow the Hyacinth in; but the tenacity or 
the loam is modified by the richest old cowdung, in a 
pulverised dry state, which, although it doubles the 
0 -rowing strength, lessens the natural adhesiv eness to 
one-half its power. Judging from the handling, it was 
yet sufficiently strong and holding to grow succession 
tine Apple plants to perfection. _ ... 
A friend, who saw the Hyacinth competition in 
Edinburgh last spring, told me that Mr. Cutbush s 
flowers were decidedly better than the Scotch-grown 
ones ; but that the Scotch growers brought up their 
plants in a better style of growth: and on asking his 
definition of a “style of growth, Why/’ he said, 
“ to be more like natural growth than forced grov tk ; 
no part of the plant, or flowers, to look as if they were 
not from the open air; the leaves stout and thick, and 
standing up as bold as Aloe leaves. 
The first question which occurs, or which did occur. 
to me, on hearing all this, was, how do these English 
and Scotch practices—the best practices in the garden¬ 
ing world without a doubt—square with the theory 
of forcing the Hyacinth, or growing bulbs in general ? 
And the answer must be very humiliating to our pride 
of intellect; for these very practices are in direct 
opposition to the common belief and practice of the 
great bulk of our scientific gardeners, so called. 
They, or rather we, say that a bulb makes a store one 
year, on which the growth of the next year depends, 
more than on the soil and kind of management it 
receives : and if that were really so, a yearly culture of 
fresh bulbs from a good pasture would seem all that 
is most necessary to success : and our own practice of 
buying the bulbs annually from abroad, where they 
grow them to perfection in the open ground, would 
also seem to be the surest way for all growers of 
Hyacinths to have them best. But experience has 
proved, and decided, that the Hyacinth requires the 
best of soil, and the best of management, every year 
alike; therefore, like other plants, one man will 
always grow them better than the rest, and get the 
best prizes for them. -The lucky men in these days 
are Mr. Cutbush, of Highgate, in England, and Mr. 
Somebody else, in Scotland, whose name I forget 
just at present. 
The way Mr. Cutbush keeps his pots damp—I do 
not mean the soil in the pots, but the very substance 
of the pots—is by double-potting. The Hyacinth pot, 
an upright 32, is placed inside a larger pot in the 
dead of the winter; and there is a little rich soil in the 
bottom of the larger pot, on which the plant-pot rests, 
and from which the bottom of it sucks up the moisture 
continually ; which makes it as necessary to water the 
outside pot as the other. His earliest plants in 
Christmas week had the whole of the flower-buds in 
sight, and from one inch to two inches of the leaves just 
round the flower-heads, both being of their true natural 
colour. These bulbs, which are his earliest, must have 
been potted very early, as they appear to have had no 
forcing yet, and now they stand on the front shelf of 
the principal Geranium-house, where they come on very 
gradually: and to get the flower-stems to advance more 
quickly, an empty small pot is turned over each of them: 
but Mr. Cutbush approves of the paper collar for the 
same purpose, which paper collar was first mentioned 
by Mr. Fish in The Cottage Gardener. 
The next, or succession, crop of Hyacinths, stood 
plunged in a border, with glass lights over them ; and 
the lights were supported on small pots inverted—thus 
giving a current of air all round: and the bulbs were 
not more than three inches from the glass. 
Along with them were quantities of Scilke, in pots, 
principally Scilla Sibirica, which would soon be in 
bloom. Large 60’s, or small 48-pots, were the size- 
pots for the Scilke; and four or five bulbs in each 
pot. For early spring flowers, to decorate, the front 
rows in a show-house, no bulb is more easily managed 
than the Scilla, It should, therefore, be grown in 
pots extensively for that. And why not the Winter 
Aconite just in the same way ? Many more of the 
very early spring bulbs might be similarly grown ; 
which, although they look gay enough in the borders, 
would look much better, and come earlier, if they 
were potted, and brought forward in a cold border , 
covered with a few spare lights, without a frame, or 
pit, or box ; but merely as Mr. Cutbush brings on his 
Hyacinths and Scilla?. 
This is a new move, and the cheapest we have yet 
tried; and it seems to answer just as well as cold frames, 
or cold pits. During very hard frost, the soil can be 
drawn in close to the sides and the ends of the lights, 
and the lights themselves be covered with mats; so that 
all the advantages of a cold pit are thus obtained at 
very little cost. Suppose whole beds made on the sur¬ 
face, in the framing ground, of old tan, or leaf mould, 
or sifted coal ashes ; the bulb pots plunged to the rims ; 
then a 48-sized pot turned upside down at each corner, 
and a Cucumber light to be resting on these pots ; and, 
perhaps, another pot in the middle, on each side of the 
light—what could be more simple for Hyacinths, 
Tulips, Narcissuses, Crocuses, and all other spring 
bulbs ; also for Strawberry pots, to give the plants 
the first move, and to keep them from heavy rains and 
frost P 
A third succession of Hyacinths was plunged out 
of sight, in old tan, right in the open air ; and Mr. 
Cutbush, like many more of us, believes this to be the 
safest way for amateurs, who have no more glass than 
will barely secure their bedding plants. If there are 
three or four inches of tan, leaf mould, or coal ashes 
over the pots, no frost will hurt the proper flowering 
of these Hyacinths: but as soon as the roots appear 
over the rim of the pots, and out at the hole in the 
bottom, the pots must be unplilnged ; and if the leaves 
have grown a couple of inches, they and the flower- 
stalk are sure to look blanched ; but that does no harm, 
provided the pots are set in some safe place out of the 
reach of the sun for the next three weeks. 
The whole secret of growing Hyacinths in pots, 
seems to be the use of the very best loam, enriched 
and made light with very rotton cowdung; abundance 
of rich, but not very strong, liquid manure ; a mere 
shelter from the rains and frosts till the flower-stems 
begin to grow freely early in the spring ; and then to 
place the pots up close to the glass, in greenhouses, or 
the same in pits, frames, or boxes. Mr. Cutbush said 
he would have the tops of the flower-stems within one 
inch of the glass, and shift them lower, or lower his 
shelves, as the growth required. 
I may add, from long experience, that the only 
secret in forced Hyacinths, to come at, or soon after, 
Christmas, is to pot the bulbs about, or not later than, 
the 10th of August. I wrote to that effect long before 
The Cottage Gardener was born ; and I was most 
handsomely “called over the coals” for so writing ; 
because it was then the practice not to get them over 
from Holland sooner than the middle of September. 
But I never yet knew a great outcry being made 
about a new, or an out-of-the-way practice, which did 
not succeed, sooner or later : and so has this. 
In those days, a story about a vinery which was 
shut up after an early crop of Grapes was gathered, 
and which broke prematurely into leaf in September, 
before it was discovered that all the lights were shut, 
suggested the idea of September being the best and 
