THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 10, 1858. 
Perhaps you can name better-shaped Roses than the above, 
and equally strong growers.”—A Subscriber, Lewisham . 
[Except Souchet , all your Roses should be tall standards, 
and not primed close ; or if you had them worked quite low, 
and grew them as bush pyramids, or low pillar Roses, from 
five to ten feet high, they would answer better. Your Roses 
are good, but the shape of a Rose does not altogether depend 
on the kind so much as on the culture. Jules Margottin , 
your best hybrid perpetual, we have seen a poor one-sided 
dower from bad culture; and Souchet , your best-coloured 
and best-shaped Bourbon , we have seen in “ buttons,” not 
worth looking at, from being on a strong high stock. Souchet 
should not be worked more than a few inches above the soil, 
and is best as a pot Rose on its own roots.] 
WEEDY LAWN—PRETENTION OF CLUBBING. 
r 
tc I shall be obliged by your saying how I can get rid of the 
enclosed weed, which is overrunning my lawn. The lawn is 
of a mossy character, which I wish to retain, but this insidious 
stuff spreads so rapidly, that I fear it will entirely destroy the 
moss, and compel me to relay it. 
“ What do you recommend to prevent all green vegetables 
from clubbing, the soil being of a loamy character ? 
“ You have repeatedly given instructions for growing Mush¬ 
rooms, which I have endeavoured to follow, but cannot succeed 
in producing any until about June, although prepared in 
October and November. 
“ Why do Gloxinias and Geraniums all go off without 
flowering, and the leaves become completely black ? 
“ I have tried, four years in succession, to produce the 
Ranunculus, getting the seed from various places. It in¬ 
variably fails ; why is it ? 
I am also very unfortunate with Violets, having plenty, but 
producing no flower. I have several gardeners; the head man 
apparently knows his business, but does not satisfactorily ex¬ 
plain his repeated failures. Some of my Tom Thumbs are 
only just showing flowers. Where is the fault ?”—A Very 
Old Subscriber in Surrey. 
[Your lawn has a very dry bottom, and, probably, is on the 
chalk formation. It must also be well suited for finer grasses, 
and the most velvety moss, and liable to scorching in hot 
weather. Under such conditions only does the “insidious 
stuff spread so rapidly.” It is one of the prettiest of our 
Alpine flora, the Mouse-ear Hawkweed, Uieracium jpilocella . 
When we undertook the defence of mossy lawns, against the 
vandalism of Dr. Bindley, and his poisonous pills and purgings, 
! to get rid of moss for ever, your “ insidious stuff” occupied 
j a large portion of our lawn, on the top of a steep bank; and 
we could not find it in our heart, hard as it is, to destroy it 
entirely, or the Daisies either; we only kept both under. The 
oldDaisies we spudded out, and the young ones we scrupulously 
saved to bloom. It is much more easy to keep the Mouse-ear 
Hawkweed in proper quantity. The day, or days, before 
mowing, or mowings, set a boy with an old, short, blunt¬ 
toothed, iron rake, and scratch the “stuff” resolutely four 
ways, from the four points of the compass. That will loosen 
the “strings,” or runners, and raise them on to the surface of 
the grass, where the scythe, or the machine, will reach them, 
and sweep them off to destruction, and thousands of the young 
plants along with them. The last time you scratch them for 
the season, sow a little White Clover seed over the place. 
That, and the improved grass, will soon keep down, if not 
destroy the weed. 
The best way to prevent clubbing, is to trench the ground 
three feet deep, and to plant such plants as are free from the 
“club.” Also, use fresh soot for the seed-beds of all plants 
that are liable to the club, and, when the plants are taken up 
for transplanting, let their roots and stems be puddled in soot 
and water, as an additional security. But thorough good deep 
trenching will rid the land, for years, of the cause of the club ; 
if you raise your seedlings on that land, you will be rid of the 
club at once. As late as 1852, we knew an acre of good kitchen 
garden which would club everything related to the Cabbage 
tribe. The top spit was as rich as any land we ever saw, and the 
bottom spit was poor and hungry, Nevertheless, it was taken 
to the top, and the beggar was put on the top of the gentle- 
299 
man, as the men said. But muck-pies and sewage made the 
top fit tor the king of spades, and no t a grub, or club, has been 
seen or heard of since. 
We want your receipt for growin gMushrooms in June and 
July. You have ours lor the rest olthe year, and if you do as 
we said, you must succeed ; but we seldom have a Midsummer 
crop of them. 
There are fifty reasons why Gloxinias and Geraniums do 
: not flower. We cannot know which of them affects your 
plants, neither can a stranger know why the seeds did not 
grow. We seldom lose one seed in a hundred of all the kinds 
we use: if we could depend on the kinds being true to 
name, we should never have a complaint 
The reason why the Tom Thumbs have not flowered to the 
middle of July is, that you, or some one, starved them for want 
of room in the spring of the year, after being badly wintered. 
The probability is, that your garden is full of insects, grubs, 
and all manner of vermin; that all your seedlings have been 
devoured in the seed-leaf; and that a thorough reformation is 
wanted all over the place.] 
PASSIFLORA AMABILIS TURNING YELLOW. 
“ I have a young plant of Bassiflora amabilis , which I 
kept in a stove all last winter, at a temperature of from 65° 
to 70°. I gave it a large shift in April. Compost—loam, 
leaf mould, Heath soil, and sand. It is getting yellow in the 
leaves, and will not grow. Will you oblige me by letting me 
know what I had best do with it P. M. K. 
[There is no doubt the shift was too large a one, and the 
drainage too imperfect. Therefore, the soil became too much 
soddened with water. The compost was right enough. Let 
it become tolerably dry, and examine it and repot it with at¬ 
tention to good drainage. Then, with steady watchfulness as 
to watering and temperature, it will flower next May. The 
plant sent with this is the wild Succory, Chicory, or wild 
Endive, Cichorium intybus .] 
SOIL UNFAVOURABLE TO PEAS. 
“ I hate vainly tried, for the last four years, to grow a 
good crop of Peas in my garden, and am at a loss to account 
for the failure. The soil is what is called strong ; the garden 
well drained. All kinds of Peas have been tried, but they 
invariably decay at the root as soon as they come into bloom. 
Most other vegetables grow well.”—J. R. 
[Why did you not mention in what part of the United 
Kingdom you live, and send us a teaspoonful of your soil ? 
Are your neighbours more successful in growing Peas ? In 
the absence of anything to guide our opinion, w T e can only re¬ 
commend that abundance of sand and chalk, or lime, be dug 
into the plot intended to be sown with Peas ; that it be 
thrown up into broad ridges, and the Peas sown on the top of 
these. Let the rows be watered in dry weather, and liquid 
manure be given to them once a week.] 
SLATE BONES FOR CUTTINGS. 
“How is drainage managed in your cutting boxes with 
slate bottoms (which I wish to try), as I conclude there are 
no holes in the slates, and the boxes must be too shallow to 
allow of any draining materials in the bottom ? 
“ 2. Would they answer equally for putting out cuttings, in 
the late autumn, to pass the winter in, as well as for the early 
spring, previous to bedding out ? 
“3. Would they answer to put the scarlet Geranium cut¬ 
tings (to strike) in at once, late in September, which is my 
time for putting out my store for next year’s bedding out, as 
I find them answer quite as well as those made earlier in the 
season ? Sometimes I do not put down any till October. 
“Last September, or October, I put some down under 
common cap glasses, in a south border, and did not lose one, 
I believe; and, when planting out in June, found them much 
finer than those in the greenhouse, which had been ‘ potted 
off’ in March in the regular way, from the cutting pans; and 
