THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— October 14, 185G. 
30 
tomentosnm; at all events, any “ coloured ” plant will only 
make it more difficult to “ do.’ ] 
PASSION-FLOWER AND CYDONTA JAPONICA NOT 
FLOWERING. 
“ A Passion-Flower and Japonica are trained against a wall 
with south aspect. The former lias stood some years, and 
of late has only flowered very badly. I think the soil re¬ 
quires to be renewed. I wish to know what soil or manure 
should be used, bow, and when. The bed in which they 
stand is one yard deep, and the plants are one yard and a 
I half apart. Liquid-manure, also guano, have frequently I 
been used.—A Darlington Subscriber.” 
[No manure or manure-water is half so good for woody- ! 
flowering shrubs and woody climbers, such as yours, as good 
fresh soil from a common, or bank, or meadow; but any j 
kind of soil that will grow good Cabbages or good Onions ! 
will do for the Passion-Flower and the Japonica; the latter | 
will grow and dower most freely in a soil in which the Pas- 
! sion-Flower would be half-starved after the first three years. 
: The roots of your Passion-Flower have travelled beyond the j 
j bed, got into poor ground, and you must mind that when 
> you renew the bed March is the best time for the work, and 
j till then you have plenty of time to collect earth, and bones, 
and some charred sticks or refuse, which are very useful 
for good climbers. Any root of the Passion-Flower which is 
more than four feet long you may cut to that length, and 
pieces of the cut-off parts about six inches long will make 
good cuttings, which will soon make as good plants a3 the 
old ones. Do not cut off any of the roots of the Japonica, 
but see that some of them are not too deep in the earth ; 
if they are, and seem to go straight down, the best way is 
to cut them off as low as you can without disturbing the 
subsoil. 
PROPAGATING BEDDING PLANTS.—LIQUID- 
MANURE. 
“ Will you infoi’m me—1st. When to sow and how to pro¬ 
pagate to the utmost such plants as Geraniums, Verbenas, 
Petunias, Calceolarias, and other bedding-plants? 
“2nd. How to apply the urine from the cow-house to 
such plants, and what sort of compost to use ? 
“ 3rd. Will you inform me of a good work on the propaga¬ 
tion of greenhouse and bedding-plants ? I am not a gar¬ 
dener, but a file-smith ; but I am very fond of gardening, 
especially plant growing. I have just finished a greenhouse, 
sixteen feet long and ten feet wide, in which and my gar¬ 
den I spend all my leisure time. I have begun to take in 
The Cottage Gardener: this is about my tenth week. I 
am also taking in the Cottage Gardeners’ Dictionary, but 
I feel a want of something else.—W. IL. S., Sheffield." 
[1. It is now too late to sow seeds of any of the plants 
you name; we must wait till about the last week in March 
for that, unless March should turn out a fine bright time of 
it; then we might sow a fortnight or so earlier. It is also 
now too late to make cuttings of any of them except the 
Calceolarias; but they do best from October cuttings, and 
any little shoots of the young wood will do if they are cut 
across at the bottom of a joint, and are planted rather light, 
about half an inch deep in a moist, sandy compost of one- 
third sand, of any colour, one-third rotten leaves, or 
rotten stuff from the bottom of a wood-stack, or any other 
heap where things rot and lie about, and one-third from the 
surface of a piece of garden ground or flower-bed, the 
whole to be well mixed, and then screened through a sieve, 
such as for sifting cinders, what remains in the sieve to be 
kept for draining pots with; one inch of it over the hole 
will do after a hollow something is first put all over the 
hole. Now, if you will just remember this at first starting, 
it will save you from a world of trouble, because every 
cutting of every bedding-plant in England will root in that 
one kind of compost, and almost every cutting which one 
wants for a greenhouse like yours the same; then, every 
cutting in the world is more safe, and is easier to manage, 
if the thickness of a five-shilling piece of sand is put over 
the surface of the compost. All pots for all manner of 
cuttings ought to be very nearly full, so that no more water 
than the thickness of a half-crown piece could lie on the 
top at any one time. Some people murder their cuttings 
by leaving an inch or more to take slushes of water; but 
none except the very commonest cuttings could stand that. 
Calceolaria cuttings prefer being in the damp, so as lo be like 
things standing out of doors, at this season. That is always 
the secret with them; they want no more heat than the 
season gives. 
2 . The urine from the cow-house is just as dangerous for 
pot-plants, and seeds, and cuttings, in the hands of a young 
beginner, as strychnine is in the hands of bad men ami 
women. You may think this.is going too far, but depend 
upon it there is not the value of a pin between the two, and 
the two are most useful articles when we know how to apply 
them; but mind one more special advice—if you have a 
thousand plants, not one of them must have liquid-manure 
from this time in the autumn till the first day of May. 
This rule is absolute in your case. One wine-glassful of 
the runnings from the cow-house is quite enough for three 
pints of pond or rain water to begin with, and every 
Tuesday and Friday in June, July, and August is often 
enough to give so much. In May and September once a 
week is quite often enough. 
3. There is not a bettor work on striking cuttings of all 
sorts in the language than The Cottage Gardeners’ 
Dictionary, and there is no special book for cuttings at all. 
Your best plan will be to keep to The Cottage Gardener, 
and to write to the Editor about every “ fix,” till you are as 
much “up to it ” as to be able to teach the best of them, like 
“ The Doctor’s Boy," for instance. Never you mind about 
bother and all that; you have the value of your money out 
of these, writers, and do not spare them. It is a mere 
“lark” to them, they are so up to it; and they could wrile a 
page while some people would be looking for pen and ink.] 
GERANIUMS FOR BEDDING. 
“ Having noticed in your number for September 23rd 
Mr. Beaton’s observations on Shrubland Park, and par¬ 
ticularly on the planting of beds No. 1 to No. 4, but not 
having the whole of the Geraniums which Mr. Beaton 
recommends them to be planted with, I have ventured to 
ask his opinion whether any of the under-mentioned which 
I have will come near the mark, as I have two oval beds to 
match each other that I should like planted as near the 
above system as.my plants will admit of my doing. The 
Geraniums which I have are Shrubland Pet, Tom Thumb, 
Frogmore, Trentliam, Globe Compaclum, Bishopstoic, Com- 
mandcr-in-Chiej] and Cerise Unique. In Variegated, the old 
Scarlet Variegated, Mangles, and Flower of the Dag; and, 
from not knowing the habit or colour either of Punch or 
Shrubland Scarlet, I cannot tell which plants to select out 
of those I have that would come nearest to those Mr. 
Beaton mentions. I therefore should feel very much obliged 
for his kind advice on the subject. Likewise, if he would 
inform me if he knows anything of the Geranium Hy¬ 
drangea flora, as I never saw this name in print, either in 
gardening journals or catalogues. I have some plants so 
named, which are of a robust habit, with large pink trusses 
of bloom, very like the Hydrangea hortensis; but the 
centre part of the truss decaying some time previously to 
the remainder being opened gives it a very dirty appearance. 
—A Young Beginner, T. T." 
[Shrubland Pet being of the Quercifoil or Oak leaf section 
will not do so well out with the scarlet breeds as one of 
their own number, and to have the Pet in bloom the whole 
season you must plant it in the pots. As the Pet, however, 
insists on celibacy, the next best use for which it is worth 
room is to bloom in-doors from March till June, with a very 
slight forcing through the month of February. For that 
purpose it should be cut down about the longest day, and 
have six weeks’ roasting in the old pot out of doors. You 
must get a more precise name than Trentliam. There air 
six or eight kinds of Trenthams, and every one of them is 
good, but different from the rest. Frogmore you must 
never plant in sight of Tom Thumb, as Tom is an improved 
Frogmore. Your stock will then consist of Cerise Unique, 
Commander -in-Chief, Compaclum, and Bishopstow Scarlet , 
besides the Variegated. The Commander will give an idea 
