I 
4-)vj THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLE MAN’S COMPANION, March 2A, 1857. 
put in a warm pit or house, but be moved into a 
temperate greenhouse when the plants are well ‘up. 
When large enough put the plants singly into small 
pots. At all times beep the soil very moist. In 
December shift into eight-inch pots, but still keep the 
plants in a coolish greenhouse. As the roots fill the 
pots continue shifting into larger pots, always using the 
compost already mentioned, and always supplying water 
abundantly. In May the plants' may be removed to 
the open borders, mixing some leaf mould or very 1 
decayed hotbed dung with the soil before planting. 
Form a deep basin, with its side extending all round 
the plant at a distance of two feet from it; put some 
manure in this basin, and supply it freely with water at 
all times of the plants’ growth, unless rain renders it 
unnecessary. 
SPRING PROPAGATION. 
This is the best time of the year for people who get 
into new places, whether they be masters or mistresses, 
handy men or first-rate gardeners, to learn the real 
capabilities of their conveniences for supplying the 
flower garden, and if they forget to make the necessary 
memoranda of failures, and of each degree of failure 
and of success, they will lose another season of their 
lives without being much the wiser than they were this 
time last year. 
How did the Verbenas do this winter in your new pit? 
Any mildew, or black insect, or dying off at the surface ? 
How did the Lobelias, the Anagallises, the American 
Groundsel, the Mignonette, the every one and all of the 
families you cultivate, grow or keep in winter? All 
the capabilities ought now to be memorandumed, and 
plants of all that have been lost must be bough t in 
without loss of time ; but do not jump out of the frying 
pan into the fire with your eyes wide open. Order only 
such plants as were propagated before the middle of last 
August, and are now fit to use for cuttings at once. I 
recollect losing all my blue Anagallises one winter, and 
writing up to London for a couple of plants of each sort, 
the small old blue, the grandiflora, and the one called 
Phillipsii, just half a dozen in all; but in the hurry of 
business the nurseryman forgot to tell his foreman of 
this department that I had lost all my stock of those 
plants, and if you believe me I did not know whether to 
laugh at my own folly or at their stupidity, or to sit 
down and have a good blubbering, at having lost another 
week of propagation, for the six Anagallises they sent 
me were only six cuttings just rooted. I shall never 
forget it, and you may profit by my disagreeable fix. 
Twelve shillings a dozen for established plants at this 
season is more economy than to get newly-struck plants 
of the same kinds for half-a-crown. 
But to return to the capability of thb new pit, the 
turf pit, or the contrivance for keeping plants in winter. 
I wonder if the Messrs. Low, of Clapton, have lost any 
of their 500,000 in those cold pits I reviewed last 
autumn. I wonder, also, if they saved coverings by 
shutting in sun heat in these cold pits in frosty weather. 
Not they, indeed, you may depend upou it; for, if they 
did not know better in olden times, they have read The 
Cottage Gardener from the beginning, in which every 
one of the writers insisted, over and over again, on the 
impolicy of the “ moon philosophy.” Mr. Barnes first, 
and Mr. Robson after him, told us how frosted Cauli¬ 
flower plants, Strawberries, and all the rest of their 
tribes ought to be dealt with. Mr. Errington is as 
regular as the seasons, or like “ a good house clock,” 
as he once told me, in his advices, of which airing 
things has had a large share. Mr. Appleby the same; 
but it is to Mr. Fish that you are all indebted for the 
right theory of ventilation at all seasons of the year. 
As for your humble servant he only hits the nail 
at the right time of the year; but the subject was : 
among the very first things I learnt on gardening. 
Mr. Niven, then the most scientific gardener on the i 
other side of the Grampians, introduced “this way" j 
to the neighbourhood of Inverness as early as 1823 
or 1S24. The father of the present curator of the Royal 
Botanic Garden at Edinburgh was the next with whom 
I had seen the practice in 1827 and 1828; but he 
practised that way of giving air for more than thirty j 
years before that. But let us say the practice was well ! 
known to some of the best gardeners in Scotland at the | 
end of the French war at Waterloo in 1815. Mr. 
Sharpe, gardener to the Earl of Eglington, and the 
wfiter kept a journal of the way the air was managed 
for the Heath houses in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden 
during the winter of 1827 without being once inside the 
garden. We could see all the glass in the Botanic from 
our bedroom windows in the Experimental Garden at 
Inverlieth. According to that journal the houses in 
our Experimental were aired this last winter, and with 
good effect; but if you want the reason, one thousand 
of our readers could give it to their cost this very day. 
It is to keep plants in winter from insects, from mildew, 
from going black at the collar while the roots and tops 
are good, and from damping off, that is, all kinds of 
bedding plants; but if you go higher or lower in the 
scale of ornamental plants we must add to the list of 
mishaps that of causing greenhouse plants to grow 
lean and lanky, and not able to flower one-half accord¬ 
ing to the size. But Mr. Fish put this point often and 
often in a better light than any previous writer. He 
said again and again, in effect, that “ the mere extension 
of the shoots is not always to be taken for lawful or 
legitimate growth. If growth is encouraged in the absence 
of air and light, or of a sufficient quantity of both to 
ripen, or organise, or solidify the said growth, it is worse 
than useless—it deceives those who do not understand 
the difference between lawful and unlawful growth, so 
to speak.” November is, perhaps, the worst time in the 
year to begin to force a plant into growth whose nature 
is to commence gi’owth only in the spring; but for one 
whole generation, at least, November was the time for 
beginning to force Grape Vines, but not St. Peter's. 
Well, what is or was the process in this beginning of 
Vine forcing ? The very process which we now call 
the moon philosophy when it is applied to plants which 
are intended to be at rest at that season. Take special 
heed of this, for it is on this very point that all the 
law and philosophy of plant management hinges. The 
Vine forcer has found, by long experience, that the most 
exciting thing and the safest thing to move the sap, 
which is naturally at the lowest point of movement at 
the time, is to shut up the Vinery early in the afternoon 
of sunny days. All the fires and hot water in the world 
are not to be compared to sun heat for early forcing, 
whether his plants be in leaf or not. Therefore, sup- j 
posing we were ignorant of the facts, can it be argued 1 
that the very sell-same process is also or equally bene¬ 
ficial to plants which we wish to be perfectly at rest? 
and the more perfectly at rest the better returns they i 
make us next season. On the contrary, is it not more 
likely that closing in sun heat with plants at rest is the 
very worst thing in the world for them, on account of 
its tendency to excite them into unlawful growth ? 
“ But my plants look well under the system for all 
that,” exclaims green philosophy; and this “ looking 
well ” lies at the root of almost all the evils to which 
plants are subject. Looking well in winter, in nine cases 
out of ten, is only another name for mismanagement. 
I kept about 2000 plants in my little conservatory , 
