IS 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Apbil 10, 1860. 
near the edge of tlie first bed, then drill down the side of 
the straight edge with the forefinger of the right hand ; 
my finger had some rough usage of this nature in my 
time ; so that a ring on the finger would be just as 
awkward to us and ours, as would be a ring in the 
gristle partof the nose of a pig or sow getting into a Kale¬ 
yard—it would hinder the natural working of the whole 
set of fingers, or any one of them at a push, like getting 
ready this branch of drill husbandry. 
When the seeds were very small, sifted soil was put 
into the bottom of the drills, and the seeds were covered 
with the same; every drill was just one inch deep and 
no more, and in filling for these small seeds the drill was 
made almost level, but not quite. 
All the Portulaccas sown this way on the 1st of May, 
would bloom from August till the frost came. The whole 
of the little blue Lobelias the same ; Mesembryanthemum 
tricolor, so called, and the common, but the best of the 
common garden Balsam, both do easier that way than 
any other way I know of—that is, for those who are not 
regular gardeners. But for this last batch of beauties, 
the eighteen-inch space between the alley and the wall 
used to be the beds for getting them up, and they were 
sown broadcast. When the sun was very hot, or the 
weather very cold, common roofing slates were set up 
leaning against the wall to screen the close-to-the-wall 
seedlings, and hoops put over the beds on the border as 
soon as they were sown, but nothing was ever put over 
the hoops for shelter till the seedlings began to appear. 
I have had the snow a foot thick over such beds on the 
first, second, and third days of April, 1830, in the heart of 
England, and the glass down to 22°, or showing 10 ° of 
frost, more than once, without ever perceiving that I lost 
a single seed by snow or frost with no covering. There 
were only three years, for the last thirty, in which I did 
not prove every word of this, more or less, and, of course, 
with different sorts of seeds. 
But what I was going to say at the beginning was, that 
I had tried the same experiment this year also, with 
“ very choice golden-striped double French Marigolds,” 
which the Messrs. Stuart and Mein, nurserymen and 
seedsmen, Kelso, or what you might call, “'the blue 
bonnets over the border ” between the Scotch and the 
English, sent to me through the office of The Cottage 
Gakdenee. The gardeners at the Experimental have sown 
the same kind of fine-striped Marigold, in heat, from a 
packet which was ordered from Kelso a month before my 
packet arrived. We shall thus see which will give the 
best and most marked stripes in the seedlings—the mild 
hotbed, or the open border-bed. We shall also count 
what the difference will be in time of coming to bloom 
of both lots, a thing I never marked down before. Even 
now it is a mere chance experiment, for we had no idea 
of trying it at the beginning of the season—nor till the 
second packet came and prompted the suggestion. But 
the main purpose of the whole story is meant more for 
the use and benefit of those of our readers who have little 
or no glass, and nothing in the way of a hotbed or extra 
heat; and who may have read or heard of the silly stories 
which have been hotpressed, printed, and published, 
.anent this subject, to the effect that one must either have 
-4 hotbed for half-hardy seeds, or put off the sowing of 
•them till after May-day. But I vouch for it, and would 
pledge all my buttons on the strength of it, that every 
seed herein mentioned, and, of course, every other kind 
of seed in the whole world which is of the same degree 
of hardiness as any one of these, will do just as well in 
hooped beds as in hotbeds, with ten times less trouble, 
and with double the chance of bringing all the seedlings 
£0 the flowering-point. The only difference in favour of 
heat is, that you get the plants sooner to market, so to 
speak- But then that difference implies the strength of 
practice to be able to manage the nursing. Our columns 
for “ Answers to Correspondents,” however, tell a different 
tale—--tell of the wide-spread of a longing for gardening, 
in the absence of the smallest degree of practical know¬ 
ledge about the rearing of seeds and many other points 
about a beginning. 
There is another move well known to gardeners, which 
has never yet been sufficiently treated of in books, but 
which deserves attention in such a season as this, and I 
shall instance it by these striped Marigolds and Alonsoas, 
as Alonsoa grandiflora and Warczewiczii. These, and 
many like them, grow too rank or too much to leaf, and 
shoot from spring-sown seeds; but plants of them kept 
one season in pots, to take cuttings from for next season, 
produce a young stock which grow much less to leaf, and 
bloom far better than the same kind do from seedlings. 
Well, by taking advantage of that property of plants 
from cuttings, we make cuttings of the tops of such seed¬ 
lings late in the spring, or as soon in April as the 
seedlings of that spring will afford the cuttings ; also, a 
second and a third crop of cuttings. Then throw away 
the bottoms, or real seedlings, and plant out from 
cuttings only, and it is often surprising what a difference 
that makes in the habit of the plants. I mean this season 
to have two crops of this fine-striped Marigold, the one 
from the seedling plants, and the other from cuttings of 
the tops of the seedlings ; and I am quite certain, unless 
the kind is very dwarf indeed, that a bed, or a row, or a 
patch from the cuttings, will be as superior to the seed¬ 
lings as this kind is said to be over the common French 
Marigold. 
When Anagallises are raised from seeds, few plants 
are seldom more weedy-looking than they, even should 
the kinds come true from seeds : they are, therefore, 
good subjects to prove this doctrine. The American 
Groundsel never comes true from seed—I mean the very 
double ones ; but try a packet of it as is here suggested, 
and my word for it you will have a nice unique bed from 
the sporting. A few days will root the tops of all your 
seedlings of it; and if you want to make more sure of the 
game, or wish to test this kind of gardening, take the 
tops of your first cuttings to make a bed of, that is the 
third remove from the seed character. I had practised 
this many years back—first with Alonsoa grandiflora, 
then with these very Groundsels, and one year from a 
acket of seeds I had from Mr. Carter, of High Holborn. 
had what you might call a regular Cineraria-looking 
bed till the frost came—some double flowers, some half¬ 
double, and some as single as a wild Daisy, and more 
colours than are in the rainbow; but if I had planted 
the seedlings they would have made a perfect mess 
of it. ' 
I never tried Alonsoa Warczeiuiczn that way, because I 
was out of practice when it came in ; but I have no doubt 
it would turn out quite a different thing from very late 
spring cuttings. Already, and a long time back, I re¬ 
corded having kept two kinds of the French Marigold 
for twelve years in succession from cuttings—a double 
pure yellow one and a fine brown double one; and of all 
the experiments I ever tried that was the most trying to 
make both ends meet. Young cuttings of them struck 
in the autumn would only keep well on a high shelf in a 
stove. It was impossible to keep them from blooming 
the whole winter; and that exhausted them so much that 
there was hardly any life in them in the spring, but every 
morsel of them would root better than any other kind I 
ever tried ; and if I once got two good cuttings rooted in 
March, there were no fears about a bed of them that 
season. The end that was aimed at in that twelve-years 
trial was to see if plants, so far removed from the seed¬ 
ling nature, would come more true from seeds than at the 
first—in short, to ascertain if it were possible to fix the 
doubleness and the colours permanently. Nothing of 
the kind, however. After the sixth year seeds were 
saved yearly from the two kinds ; and they came, like as 
of old, of all manner of sorts—some double, some not, 
and some of all colours. And the aim of this edition of 
the story is, to warn others from attempting to keep 
