356 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
CHINESE PRIMULAS 
PLANTED OUT. 
Those who would wish to have some large 
plants of these pretty flowers for winter decoration 
will do well to try the following plan, which I have 
seen carried out during three summers :—Obtain a 
good strain of seeds from some reliable seedsman, 
sow them in the usual way, and grow them on in any 
old pit or frame for the first summer, and they will 
come in for autumn use in various ways. Instead of 
throwing the plants away when they have finished 
flowering, take care of them until the spring, when 
they should be planted out in a frame, in a compost 
made up of two parts of sandy loam to one of 
leaf soil. Plant them about 2 ft. from plant to plant, 
give good waterings as required, and syringe every 
evening. The lights should be kept off the plants 
both night and day except in severe weather, to keep 
them dwarf ; if very sunny weather a little shading 
during the middle of the day for a few hours should 
be given, but great care must be taken that the 
shading does not exclude the air. All dead leaves 
should be regularly removed, and also the flower 
spikes if the plants are not over-vigorous. 
The plants should be allowed to stop in the frame 
until the early frosts begin to appear, when they 
should be carefully lifted with a fork, and have the 
balls reduced to as small a size as it will be safe to 
reduce them to. Then pot them in a compost similar to 
that in which they were planted out, and place them 
in a frame facing north for a week or ten days after 
receiving a good watering, and after that time they 
may be removed to the greenhouse. Great care must 
betaken in watering at first, as the fresh soil through 
the absence of roots is likely to get sour. They 
should be thoroughly watered when they want it, 
and not otherwise, but of course they must not be 
allowed to get dust dry. Plants treated in this way 
may be had fit for any exhibition stand. Some may 
hick that such plants will be all leaves and no 
flow’ers, but I can assure them that if properly treated 
the case will be quite different, and if the flowers are 
not quite so large this deficiency is more than made up 
in point of number. I have seen plants only lately 
grown this way quite 2 ft. across in 5-in. and 6-in. 
pots. I should like to know if any one has tried the 
lovely Primula obconica in this way, and with what 
results.— Journeyman. 
EARLY CAULIFLOWERS 
AND THEIR CULTURE. 
The new and improved strains of these now offered 
for sale, of which Veitch’s Extra Early Forcing is a 
notable type, are, no doubt, invaluable for first 
crops, but we have never allowed autumn sowings of 
such sorts to be superseded by spring sowings, as in 
some seasons we have found plants wintered in 
frames answer our purpose better, and more con¬ 
veniently hardened off in changeable weather. From 
autumn sowings a number of extra strong plants are 
also more readily secured for potting up, which is a 
capital system of preparing them for holding their 
own during periods of bleak east winds and occasional 
sharp frosts after being planted out with the balls 
ntact. 
When these are placed in 2j-in. or 3-in. pots about 
the first of November they are usually in good order 
for planting in their permanent quarters by the 
middle of March. If hand-glasses are available they 
should certainly be taken advantage of in order to 
protect them for several weeks, removing the covers 
during the day, unless when very severe frost pre¬ 
vails or heavy snow or hail showers. The covers 
should be kept on during the night till the middle of 
April, and a light mulching of rough stable litter may 
be placed among the stems of the plants. Those 
who have not the convenience of hand-glasses would 
do well to shift their plants which occupy small pots 
into 4^-in. or 5-in. sizes and grow them on in a 
frame for a month or so, admitting abundance of air 
on all favourable occasions. 
With the exception of a slight check after re¬ 
potting this management will ensure free and unin¬ 
terrupted growth till heads are ready for cutting. 
Where frame or hand-glass accommodation may not 
be available protection to plants in their permanent 
quarters can be afforded by covering them with suit¬ 
able sized flower pots at night, or by surrounding 
them with short twiggy spruce bushes till they have 
got a good start. Good soakings of water with the 
chill taken off and mulching afterwards are always 
beneficial in dry periods, particularly on soils of 
light textures. When from weather and other 
causes plants which have been pricked out in frames 
have not been planted out in good time and the soil 
has become too dry, they should be thoroughly 
soaked with water, otherwise it will be difficult, if 
not impossible, to lift them with good balls in trans¬ 
ferring them to the open borders, which is, of course, 
one of the principal advantages of pricking off the 
seedlings in frames. I have observed strong plants 
thus raised, when thoroughly hardened off before 
transplanting, maintain a neck-to-neck race with 
those turned out of pots at the same time, and they 
were only a few days later in yielding produce. 
We rely on spring sowings of the extra early 
dwarf sorts chiefly for a supplementary supply, and 
the quick returns realised from these render them 
invaluable for this purpose. Sown a fortnight later 
than if they were required for first crops the 
difficulty with hardening off is considerably lessened, 
which is so much relief when pots and frames are 
w holly required for forcingPotatos and numerous other 
purposes. We do not plant these early dwarf Cauli¬ 
flowers closer than 18 in. from row to row nor from 
10in. to 12 in. plant to plant, and have found this 
system especially beneficial during periods of ex¬ 
cessive heat and drought, as the ground is thus 
entirely shaded and the plants do not usually require 
more space for their growth. When planting in 
handlights from six to eight plants are not considered 
too many for a light about 20 in. square, but in the 
case of such sorts as Early London a few plants less 
may be sufficient.— D. M., Ayrshire. 
WIREWORMS. 
I have read with interest the report on the Cornell 
University experiments on Wireworms. I have given 
some attention to this matter for a few years past, 
and I sent a few notes once to the “ World ” of my 
experiments. At that time my knowledge of their 
vital powers was not so conclusive as now. How¬ 
ever, I then gathered sufficient insight into their mode 
of life to lead me to state the great difficulty, not 
only of destroying them when separated from their 
natural element, but also that of the almost hope¬ 
lessness of doing so by an application of an antidote 
to the soil. I am still of the same opinion. And, 
also, I then stated that strong liquid ammonia was 
the most effectual chemical that I found to cause 
death in the shortest time. The fact of their being 
so tenacious of life lead me on another track, and the 
results of which I here state, but do not corroborate 
the research of the Americans. 
I collected about a dozen worms and put them in¬ 
to a wide-mouthed glass-stoppered bottle into which 
I put fine dried soil entirely devoid of vegetable 
tissue—the supposed food of these worms. The 
bottle was then placed in a dry corner of the stoke-hole 
with the merest opening at the cork or stopper to ad¬ 
mit some air. I put it away in the hope of seeing 
them all dead when I should look at it again. In 
this I was disappointed. A week, a month, and three 
months passed, and the prisoners were as plump and 
lively as the day on which they were put in. At the 
end of that time I tried the effects of several 
chemicals upon them again, but apparently their 
powers of vitality were as strong as when taken 
fresh from their native element. 
I then got another lot, and put them into a bottle 
with some soil and a fair quantity of fresh soft vine 
rootlets, set it in what I considered favourable cir¬ 
cumstances — a warm, moist and shady corner of a 
vinery. I found at the end of a corresponding period 
to the former experiment that the rootlets were never 
touched just what I anticipated. My inference 
from this then very naturally was that the wireworm 
cannot be quite the voracious and terribly destruc¬ 
tive thing I was taught to believe it to be, and in 
this view I am supported by an instance which I think 
I pointed out before in the “ World,” of a vinery con¬ 
taining a fine lot of trees, of most exquisite foliage 
and health, but whose borders have been swarming 
with wireworm for years. 
Yet I can fully believe the possibility of these 
worms attacking the young, fleshy roots of plants, 
though I cannot so well understand of them to be so 
terribly destructive on seeds or grain as the Ameri¬ 
can experiments have discovered them to be. Of 
course the American kind may slightly differ from 
the British species, but one thing is clear, that both 
are equally difficult to destroy .—D Chisholm. 
February 6, 1892. 
RESERVE PEAS. 
It is a misfortune in all cases when, from some cause 
or other, the which has been unforeseen, Peas sown 
with the customary liberality come up so thinly in 
the rows that they hardly merit staking. Seed may, 
in spite of appearance, be unfertile, or too old, or in 
some way be incapable of growth ; or mice or slugs 
may play havoc with the seedling growths. Mis¬ 
fortunes of this kind do happen sometimes, and then 
there is regret that no reserve of plants is at hand to 
fill up the vacant places. There is special reason 
this season why some sort of reserve should be pro¬ 
vided for, because Peas ripened and harvested badly 
last year, wrinkled sorts especially so, and it will be 
almost impossible for seedsmen to guarantee a really 
good class growth. 
Then growth may be good or indifferent according 
to soil, weather, etc., when sowing takes place. Still 
it is not easy to wait long when the usual sowing 
time arrives, for seed must then be committed 
to earth, or not at all. But to guard against 
contingencies it is so easy to have a reserve 
of plants in pots sown thinly at the time 
the out-door sowing is made. The pot-sown seeds, 
having the protection of a frame, are almost certain 
to germinate freely, and would a month later be 
somewhat in advance of the plants raised out in the 
open. But that would be of no consequence, es¬ 
pecially if really needed to fill up vacant spaces in 
the rows, because the transplanting from pots, if the 
root clumps be somewhat opened, would, of course, 
create a slight check, and that check would suffice to 
enable the stoutly-rooted plants already in the rows to 
become equally advanced. 
A little later such reserve stock is best sown in 
48-sized pots, about ten Peas in each, even if not re 
quired to make faulty rows good, the pots can be 
turned out as clumps, a foot apart, in well-prepared 
soil, and later will give a splendid crop of pods. 
—A. D. 
-- 
WHEN OUGHT FRUIT 
TREES TO BE PLANTED? 
Some gardeners never think of plan ting till spring, just 
because that is the time when all nature is about to 
revive, and much planting is accomplished about 
that time. Others there are who must plant when 
they can find time, and when the weather in winter 
is open and the ground in fairly workable condition. 
A still smaller number take time by the forelock and 
plant in autumn just after the fall of the leaf, or even 
before it, say during the last fortnight of October, or 
the first fortnight of November. Where circum¬ 
stances are favourable, those four weeks are cer¬ 
tainly the best of all the year for planting hardy 
fruit trees, such as Apples, Pears, Plums, and 
Cherries. 
The soil still preserves a considerable amount of 
its warmth, and encouraged by the accession of 
moisture from autumn rains, a considerable amount 
of root extension takes place before winter. The food 
material which has been elaborated in the leaves is 
all drafted into the stems before the foliage drops, 
and goes to the thickening of the stems as well as to 
thicken and extend the root system. Trees are 
therefore actively at work for a long time after the 
fall of the leaf, in fact until frost or very cold weather 
puts a stop to it. Moreover growth may take place 
in the soil long after the air is too cold for that to 
happen above. 
It is not difficult then to perceive that trees moved 
in the autumn will be partly established, not only 
before the succeeding summer, but even before the 
return of spring. This would be a decided advantage 
in the case of those trees well laden with fruit buds, 
for they would be able to carry a crop of fruit to per¬ 
fection. Even large trees would not suffer much by 
transplanting at this time, if they were fairly well 
furnished with plenty of fibrous roots as they ought 
to be. Of course very large trees that have not been 
moved for many years should be previously prepared 
by root pruning during one or two autumns preced¬ 
ing that in which the process of transplanting is to be 
effected. Young trees would not necessitate this 
previous preparation; and in fact they are those 
which would suffer least from late transplanting. 
There are several conditions to be borne in mind 
by those who would derive the fullest advantages 1 , 
from autumn planting or transplanting as the czse ; 
may be. The ground must be well prepared and. 
read/, nor must it be saturated with w'et, and if it 
