172 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Dkckmbsb 20, 1859. 
year. And when we come to compare notes we find that 
we can be of material service to our correspondent, 
Mr. W. P. Ruddock, of the York Cemetery, from our 
longer time and experience in that cheap way of filling a 
rosery, in return for his facts accomplished in less time 
than any others on record. I have no doubt that we 
might also be of considerable use to the great Rose- 
growers and to their catalogues, and through them to the 
public at large, if we had kept a strict list of all the kinds 
of which cuttings were made; as, at the end of three or 
four years, some of the kinds of which we are certain of 
the names have turned out quite different from what 
they are described in the catalogues. The difference being 
almost, if not entirely, owing to the kinds being on their 
own roots, and neither stimulated by a stronger root, nor 
kept more dwarf by a less vigorous or less healthy stock 
than their own. 
Some well-known Roses which make but an ordinary 
full standard when worked on the Dog Rose, have grown 
in three years from cuttings to make pillar Roses; seven 
feet high in the fourth year from a cutting; and ten feet 
in the fifth year. While others, which cannot be kept as 
regular standards at the Experimental, owing to their 
free habit of making very long shoots, are now put down 
in our book of details of management as second-size 
Roses. 
We have also discovered, and Mr. Ruddock will do the 
same in a year or two, that some Roses will work the 
pride out of themselves the very first year, some the 
second, and some not till the third or fourth season; 
while others will begin to grow slowly at first, and not 
show their character of strong growers under the seventh 
or eighth year. A plant taking the pride out of itself, in 
the language of gardeners, is one which speedily grows to 
its full extent, or cripples itself by too much bloom or 
fruit. Some of Mr. Ruddock’s Roses, which have made 
shoots four feet long the first growth from the graft, will 
probably not make much more than four feet of annual 
growth for the next seven years ; and some which are 
now not over a foot high will make stout pillar Roses in 
that time. At all events, such are the conclusions I have 
arrived at from the experience of some years in the use 
of Rose-cuttings. Probably the Manetti-stock may give 
a sudden impulse to the growth of the grafts, as it always 
does when done by budding, and that must derange the 
comparison between grafts and cuttings during the first 
few years, but not afterwards ; for as soon as the Manetti 
forces up a vigorous growth from a graft, its own life is 
done for: that effort will return, as it were, with the 
returning sap in the autumn, and shake off the trammels 
of the strangling stock by rooting on its own account, so 
to speak, the second year. “ I grafted fifty [Roses on 
the Manetti] in March, 1858; and I moved them last 
week [end of November, 1859.] They were all Hybrid 
Perpetuals, and they are all now rooted from the grafts 
—that is, from the bottom part of the graft, where it was 
cut; or say rooted from the edges of the cut made for 
grafting in the first instance, and rooted up afterwards to 
the surface of the ground from all the eyes which were 
on the grafts, or from all where the eyes should come 
from if they were not blinded. 
Another practical lesson of equal value was taught by 
these experiments—the deaths are recorded from grafts 
“ not near enough to the root of the stock.” The bottom 
of the graft should reach down to the first roots. A 
notch made just close over the fibrous roots, and then a 
thin slice of the wood from above the notch cut down to 
it, is as good a way as any. The graft is then cut with a 
square end to rest on the notch ; and then the graft of 
necessity must be buried as deep as the roots, or nearly 
so, which is another main point. Anybody may begin 
grafting these Roses to-morrow, or to-morrow night, and 
go’on every evening or every day to the end of March. 
The grafting may commence, indeed, as soon as the fall 
of the leaf, and go on all winter. 
Some of my readers will still remember how tne graft¬ 
ing little pieces with two eyes only, and small pieces 
with only an eye,’was explained from the Lea Bridge 
Nursery last spring. The Messrs. Fraser had then a 
whole houseful of new Roses fully established from such 
small grafts, made since the last fall of the leaf- Almost 
all their plants made two shoots each from the two eyes, 
and both looked equally strong. But, then, their grafting 
was to increase and multiply the new kinds of Roses as 
fast as the weeks and months came round ; so their grafts 
were not buried in a Cemetery, nor in the natural soil in 
the pots ; and the wood from their grafts was also cut in 
pieces as soon as it was half and three-parts ripe for the 
same end, which was not that end of the stock which is 
the best for grafting on. 
The doctrine which would save the roots of a stock or 
tree from a free use of the knife at planting time, to 
save the mouths of the roots at the tips of their ex¬ 
tremities, was bad from the beginning, and no plant in 
the catalogue could prove the fact more clearly than 
a Rose. You had only to save the spongioles of the 
Rose, as the sucking-mouths are termed, for a few 
times of transplanting, to have the plants, roots, and 
blossoms ruined. Rose-roots must be well docked by 
the knife, and root-pruned by the rule, every time the 
plants are removed, if that were at the end of every 
autumn ; and if only six or eight inches of the bare black 
stump-like roots are left, all the better—every part of their 
skin, or bark, is just as able to suck up moisture as the 
tips of the roots ; and every piece that is cut off, and is 
six inches long and as thick as penholder, will make as 
good a stock for grafting on as' a Manetti, for the only 
U3e it is for is to nurse the graft the first season. But the 
grafting on pieces of the roots must be done at the other 
end of the stock—the top end, and that is all the difference. 
The grafted part should be planted as deep in the ground 
as the bottom part of a worked Manetti: and to make this 
root-grafting more safe and sure, the best plan would be 
to draw drills, as for Sweet Peas, and to plant the grafted 
stocks in the bottom of the drill with a trowel, not with a 
dibber, leaving only one bud of the graft above the soil, 
and to earth up the plants in the drill as soon as the first 
growth was sufficiently long, or say when the first shoot 
was six inches long. 
It is now quite certain that grafting Roses is a 
more expeditious method than rearing them from cut¬ 
tings, although, in the long run, it amounts to the 
same thing. Those who are expert at cuttings may 
even find it a surer method, and the trouble and time are 
much about the same in the two methods. Those who 
fail with Rose-cuttings may be more successful with graft¬ 
ing ; and gardeners who can manage both ways will be 
guided to either by their convenience. If they have 
stocks at hand they will work them ; if not, they will put 
in their cuttings and wait longer for established plants. 
Manetti seems the best stock ; and the roots of any kind 
of Rose, so that they are not too old or too strong, the 
next best. When roots are so old as to throw up 
suckers in opposition to the graft they will be trouble¬ 
some the first year; but after that the grafts will root 
for themselves. 
The time will come whenRoses will be classed according 
to their natural growth on their own roots, not according 
to the artificial strength or weakness induced by this or 
that kind of stock; and when that time comes the pruning 
of Roses must be also very different to what it is now. 
Our York correspondent, Mr. Ruddock, will find out 
next summer that, if he prunes his four-feet shoots from 
his grafts a3 he would the head of a tall standard Rose, 
he will multiply his shoots, and get them longer and 
stronger; but his Roses will not be so numerous, or so 
fine, in some of the kinds, as if he did not prune at all. 
Let us say, for the practical guidance of all,that a grafted 
Rose sends up three strong shoots. One is four feet long, 
another two feet, and the third Bhoot only one foot high. 
