THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, March 13, i860. 
363 
t 
3 
! 
r 
I, 
t 
n 
.e 
% 
H 
st 
move is to clear some range of cold pit, fork up or dig 
over tlie bottom, or put iu plunging stuff. All the small 
pots, with one plant iu each, they plunge to the rim in 
something at the bottom of a shallow pit or frame. That 
occupies more than double the time in getting them in, 
but it lessens the work of watering to one-third of that 
which would apply to pots of that size standing on the 
surface ; and it is ten times better for the health and 
progress of the young stock ; and moreover, when space 
is most valuable, a plant that would need a 48-sized pot 
if it had to stand on the surface, will do rather better 
should it be confined to a 00-sized pot, if it is plunged. 
Very sandy soil is the best to plunge in early iu the 
spring and to bedding-out time, but not the best for the 
summer. The reason why it is best is this: When you 
fill a range of cold pits with plunged pots in sandy or very 
sandy soil, or absolute sand, the glass is kept down close 
for the first ten clays, more or less according to the 
weather; and on the forenoon of sunny days the plants 
are watered or syringed over the leaves. Either way the 
plunging stuff gets more or less rooting; and according 
to its dampness is its capacity to heat by the rays of the 
sun. 
When it was very fine and sunny at the time of 
plunging the newly potted stock, I have seen the first 
three or four inches deep of the plunging sand watered 
just as carefully as the pots, in order to give it capacity 
for taking and holding sun heat on purpose to assist the 
nursing process with the plants ; and I have often tested 
small pots so treated, and found them to be sensitively 
warm to the bottom, as if they were plunged in a spent 
hotbed of dung. That state, then, is the gardener’s ne 
plus ultra for nursing his young stock of hardy bedders 
at this season of the year. 
Now, let us go in and see him actually at work the 
first day of the spring potting season. His Gdlden 
Chains, his Dandies, his Lady Dlymouths, and his Mini- 
mums, with a large share of his more strong kinds of 
variegated plants, have been in better soil and in better 
positions all last winter, and they are now passed over ; 
and instead of them he takes, first, the whole stock of 
Darkaivays, young and old. The old are six to eight 
in No. 32-pots, and have been since last October; and 
his last-autumn cuttings are from twelve to fifteen and 
twenty in large 48-pots, and in wide-mouthed pots on pur- 
■ >ose for a few more kinds like Darkaivay. Both kinds of 
jots are just one-half full of cinders and one crock at the 
bottom, and the soil is very much like that they pot 
Epacrises in; but it is the quantity of leaf mould and 
sand that makes it look now so much like sandy peat. 
Darkaioay is one of the well-proved Minimums, and 
pays for all this care, and would not pay wfithout it in 
the hands of many. Well, he begins with the old plants, 
shakes them entirely out of the mould, trims the heads 
from all that has happened since they were last in the 
E otting-shed, and trims the roots also; many of them 
aving gone the way of all the earth already ; and if 
there are too many of them for his pot he reduces them 
freely, and gives each plant a No. 48-pot, small size, 
or two medium-sized plants in a large 48, or four small, 
old plants in the same sized pot, as he is tightly tied up 
for room. These, the biggest plants, come in for the 
back rows in the plunging, and he guesses by a rule of 
thumb the extent of plunging-room his Darkaways will 
occupy, and he puts them in according to their heights 
and square on the bed. 
The cutting-pots aro all turned out before he begins 
potting any of them ; and as each pot is emptied the 
young plants are put down on the bench—first, second, 
and third size. All his young LLarlcs are in these three 
heaps, and he begins potting from the heap of the larger 
plants; he puts four of them regularly in a large No. 
60-pot, and plunges them in front of their old mothers ; 
the second size he puts four of them also in the small¬ 
sized 60-pots ; and the last, or smaller size, go six plants 
in large 60’s. The soil he uses is about one-half best 
yellow loam, three or four years old hotbed and cow- 
dung dry as dust, and will run like leaf mould through 
a small sieve, and sand half and half; and all the pots 
are watered before they leave the potting-bench. 
The Darkaways have a thin, small, plain green leaf, 
different from all the rest; therefore they require no 
tallies or number-sticks, and even if they did they should 
not get any this time, as the plan obviates that portion 
of the work. But I must first tell that the Darkaways 
come in just after the Golden Chains on the ribbon- 
border, or on their own account in edging round beds 
of other kinds, and for mixing in pincushion-beds ; then, 
if they needed the care of naming or tallying, as we say 
in this plunging, Daron Dugel would save the trouble. 
He is so very distinct in his dwarf, and very dark horse¬ 
shoe leaf, that, plunged next the Darkaways, neither ot 
them want a tally, and both of them would do as a mark 
between any two Trentham Scarlets or Shruhland 
Scarlets ; so that for four hundred plants of each of the 
four kinds four tallies would suffice, and no more 
would be needed if you multiply each kin by ten or 
twenty. So you see that a small practical ingenuity, 
which has grown to a system of management, will save, 
or may save, one fifty thousand tallies or number-sticks, 
and all the sorts be as true as naming could make them. 
Floiver of the Day or any other variegated Geranium 
would answer the same end if plunged on this system. 
As the Daron Dugel differs nothing in respect to winter 
treatment, spring potting, and getting out among the 
bedders, from the said Darkaway, book them both for 
one, and let me explain a mystery which will be briefty 
touched on to-day in another page. 
When Tom Thumb came out there were five or six 
kinds of Slirubland Scarlets all over the country, in ad¬ 
dition to the original and lawful Shruhland Scarlet, alias 
Smith’s Dmperor: that was from visitors taking away 
cuttings of my seedlings which I never then named, nor 
do I 'now; but Tom put them all down. Trentham 
Scarlets got about exactly in the same way, from Mr. 
Fleming not naming all his given-away cuttings or seed¬ 
lings. And what is the true Trentham Scarlet no man 
on earth, or under it, can ever tell. The one that put 
down Tom Thumb at the Crystal Palace is the best flower- 
garden Scarlet Geranium I ever saw, and I have seen 
more of them than most people; but I have a much 
better scarlet flower, though not such a good bedder as 
that at the Crystal Palace, which I received from Mr. 
Fleming himself in 1856 as his best Trentham Scarlet of 
that year, or up to that date; and out of eighty-four 
kinds of scarlets which were sent to the Experimental 
Garden that Trentham Scarlet carried the palm in the 
eye of the good lady who allows me the use of her beau¬ 
tiful garden for my experiments, and at her cost from 
first to last. Other very good judges of colour go with 
her in favour of “our ” Trentham Scarlet; and-I never 
saw a single reason to differ from them. Some one has 
been puzzled by my saying that this was the best scarlet 
flower I ever saw, and that the Trentham Scarlet at the 
Crystal Palace was the best bedder ot them all. Ihe 
latter is exactly like Tom Thumb in looks of leaf and 
wood, and in strength of growth ; but a four-times-better 
bloomer, and a richer colour in the mass than Tom. 
The former has no part or affinity with the blood of Tom s 
breed; it never, or not in four years, rises to one-half 
the size of Tom Thumb; and it %is, from its short joints 
and excessive blooming, the most difficult of all the 
Scarlet breed to get cuttings from, and of all the Scarlet 
Geranium flowers in the world it is by far the richest; 
but the habit and the short dumpy style of growth 
render it a second-rate bedder, and it is quite as difficult 
to get a stock of it as of the Golden Chain■ The notice 
or remark made opposite its name in the “ Garden Book 
for 1859 is this “ The first ten inches of the bed to be 
in future of yellow Wimbledon loam one-half, the other 
