THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
these they use in August to follow after annuals which 
were sown at the beginning of April. 
Hundreds of plants come from cuttings bf the roots at 
this season with a little extra heat. You might cut the 
roots of many of the Roses like meat for mince pies, and 
sow the bits like Peas in pots, and cover them like Cab¬ 
bage seeds, and up they would come like pots of seed¬ 
lings ; and if they were of the perpetual classes they 
; would flower, or many of them, the same autumn. It is 
only for want of trying that so few believe that most 
roots are just as excitable in the spring as the roots of 
Couch Grass and Bindweed are all the year round. 
Before I go further allow me to remind you of a good 
old story which comes in just now better than all the 
stories about the elections, and that is, how to stop the 
damp among seedlings and soft-wooded cuttings. A little 
more air and five degrees more heat is a good rule; 
but the grand secret is to have a little very dry sand and 
peat, as small as dust and as dry as Scotch snuff mixed 
together, and to take a pinch of this between the finger 
and thumb, and to sprinkle it over where the damp is 
playing havoc. The dryness of the mixture sucks the 
wetness of the plant to such a degree as no ordinary 
damp can staud against; or, if it does continue, take a 
stick and make holes in the mould down to the crocks, 
and fill these holes with the peat and sand-snuff, and 
the peat will resist the water for weeks. You never saw 
such a simple practice turn out so effectually as this does 
in propagating. But one might fill a book with the 
mysteries of the propagating department by merely 
skimming the surface of a long memory. 
If you were to take the mysteries in detail “ there is 
no end to them but all ordinary people ought to know 
that many cuttings which are too hard for them to strike 
would now make excellent scions to graft on pieces of 
the roots taken from the same plants ; but did you ever 
hear of burying the scion alive after grafting it on a 
root or Stock ? It is an every season’s practice in the 
nurseries with grafts of Oaks, Walnuts, Robinias, and 
dozens besides. They graft and tie, tie and graft, whole 
long rows up and down through a large “ quarter,” and 
then “ earth up ” the rows as they “ mould up ” Po¬ 
tatoes, burying the halls of clay and all butrthe beak of 
the scion. But to imitate this fashion in-doors or in 
frames and hotbeds is the question. This I shall not 
explain till I come to that part in the grafting of Gera¬ 
niums, which I will tell about next week. 
D. Beaton. 
WINDOW GARDENING FOR SPRING. 
(Continued from page 410.) 
V. Watering. —There is no subject more bewildering to 
beginners than this. Let a gardener go into any house 
where there are plants in the window, and “ How often ought 
I to water such and such plants ? ” is a question that is sure 
I to be put, partly in the hope of gaining information, and 
partly for the purpose of conferring honour upon the in¬ 
formant, as, rightly or wrongly, the general public has got it 
into its head that the best way to please a gardener is just to 
give him the chance of telling everything he knows about 
' gardening. I know I cannot advance one new idea, but I 
will try to treat the matter intelligently and simply, ar¬ 
ranging the observations chiefly under three divisions,— 
when to water, how to water, and what water to use. 
1. When to Water .—Plants in windows often suffer from 
the knowledge respecting them being somewhat of a misty, 
transitionary character. A young lady listens to an eloquent 
lecture describing some of their most striking peculiarities 
as living existences, and forthwith she resolves they shall 
have as regular attention as her pet dog and her favourite 
pony. It is not the attention, however ample, that is in 
fault; it is the regularity of ministering to the real or sup¬ 
posed wants of the plants that constitutes the mischief. 
The pony, unless in some extra or extreme case, must be 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, March 31, 1857. 439 
fed regularly, or a healthy digestion and assimilation cannot 
be maintained. Somewhat analogous processes in plants 
are dependent on the circumstances of the plant at the 
time—growing, at rest, or approaching a state of repose—and 
on its position as respects sunshine and shade, and a high 
or a low temperature; so that the judicious wielding of the 
water-can is not so much a matter of regular routine as of 
thought, intelligence, and adaptation to circumstances. I 
either do not see correctly or I am greatly misinformed by 
others if this routinism is not gaining a strong hold elsewhere 
than among amateurs and beginners. “ Such and such 
plants require such and such attentions.” “ Oh! well, I’m 
sure I did everything for them they required at such and 
such a time.” Pass the same plants hours afterwards and 
you may find them suffering dreadfully.- The clever disciple 
of routine can only attend to certain things at certain and 
regular intervals, and is very apt to mount a hobby-horse of 
important dignity, or let himself down into a squash of 
sulks, if it be hinted that attention to such trifles is more 
important in gardening than the most punctilious regularity. 
I have, in scores of cases, been mortified with the blank 
looks of disappointment when, in answer to the question, 
“When and how often should I water such plants?” I 
have been forced to reply, “ Just whenever they need it, and 
at no other time.” The sunny look and sparkling eye, the 
truest and most eloquent of all “ thank you’s,” could only be 
obtained after a series of explanations. “ How am I to 
know when the plant needs watering ?” Be attentive to its 
language, and it will tell you most unmistakably, by showing 
symptoms of suffering from thirst. Do not wait for the 
proofs of the suffering, in the leaves being welted and hang¬ 
ing their heads like a bulrush ; for though a plant may 
recover after several such cases of neglect, in every case it 
is liable to a great permanent injury. Watch the first signs of 
distress, and there and then apply the relief. Success in all 
in-door gardening greatly depends in never allowing the 
plants to suffer from neglect. The restoring them after¬ 
wards, however well done, is merely a make-shift excuse 
for want of attention. As a general principle, the same rule 
holds good in respect to a cutting. Never allow its leaves to 
flag, and it will have roots all the sooner. Some people 
obtain, and then carry home cuttings in such a way that, but 
for being thought rude, I have been tempted to tell them it 
would have been quite as well if they had saved themselves 
and me all the trouble of getting them. 
‘‘ But the leaves of such a plant frequently flag, especially 
in sunshine, and yet the soil seems moist enough, and even 
when I water it does not always cure the evil.” Are you 
sure that the soil is any more than seemingly moist ? because 
some people give such driblets of water that the surface 
earth may be moist, and all the rest of the bulk of the ball 
in the pot dry. There are two simple modes by which a 
little practice will enable you to decide in a moment. Try 
the weight of a certain sized pot filled with moist, and a 
similar sized pot filled with dry soil, and you will soon know, 
merely by lifting the pot, whether the soil is uniformly moist 
or not. Strike the side of the pot with your knuckle, just as 
if you were trying the soundness of a China vessel in a 
store; if it emits a dull, heavy sound the soil is moist; if 
the sound is light and more ringing the soil is. dry. In 
the latter case the remedy is obvious—a thorough watering 
must be given. In the case of soft-wooded plants in 
general this may be accomplished by watering over the 
surface, and allowing the saucer to stand nearly full of 
water for half an hour or so. In the case of small, hair- 
rooted plants, for which heath soil has been used, a similar 
mode may be adopted, as the water will in time be sucked 
up into the ball from the saucer. Without such means you 
can hardly ever moisten a compact ball of earth, full of 
roots, that has got very dry. The water will escape by the 
fissures at the sides of the pot, or fly off at a tangent from 
the dry interior, like the drops of rain from a duck’s wing 
when she gives it a shake. 
Though I have mentioned the above a likely to be suit¬ 
able in the case of small plants, yet the most simple and 
effectual mode for redressing internal dryness, and especially j 
if the pots are any size, is to place the pot overhead in a 
pail of water. If few air bubbles escape it is a sure sign 
that the interior of the ball is not dry. If they seethe and 
| bubble at the surface, almost resembling an effervescing 
