July 18th, 1885. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
725 
course is the best, for it contains all the nutritious 
elements favourable to this plant, and is lasting in its 
effects. I also add a handful of old lime rubbish or 
charcoal to make it porous. The whole is well mixed 
together, 5-in. pots are crocked, and they are 
carefully potted into them. It may be as well to 
say that if the ball is broken in the operation, I 
throw the plant on the rubbish heap ; it might grow, 
but it is seldom worth the trouble of looking after- 
After they are potted, they are placed as near to the 
glass either in a frame or greenhouse as possible. 
Stakes are put in, and in a short time they are potted 
into 7-in. pots, using the same sort of soil as before. 
As soon as the roots touch the edges of the pots, they 
are again potted into 10-in. or larger, which is their 
last shift; the soil is rammed into the pots with a 
piece of stick, and then a trellis is made to train 
them on. 
I consider this trellis far superior to the usual 
system of training, and as I have never seen it done 
before, I will simply state the sizes: diameter of 
bottom ring, 2 ft. 6 ins.; perpendicular height from 
the cross-bars tied to pot to the two semicircles 
crossing above, 1 ft. ; distance between the rings, 3 ins. 
I have had plants on such a trellis 3 ft. to 5 ft. through, 
and you could not see the wire-work, which was 
covered with bloom. After the trellis has been put on 
take out the stakes, tie 'down the shoots, and place 
the plants in cold frames. To grow standards the 
same treatment is given, only one shoot is led up a 
stake. All the side shoots are pinched out, and when 
high enough, a trellis is made and the shoot pinched. 
This will cause three or four shoots to break out, which 
are tied down. I have had standards 3 ft. to 4 ft. 
high, and 3 ft. across, with hundreds of heads of 
blooms. 
Watering is one of the most important points 
requiring attention in the cultivation of Mignonette. 
At no time should the plants be allowed to get too 
dry or too wet, for more injury is done through 
injudicious watering than anything else. As I 
have already taken up much space, I can only say 
in conclusion give soot water now and again to 
keep worms down, and liquid manure previous to 
flowering.— John Cameron, Caryiljield, Edinburgh, N.B. 
■- . ■'T Tr O - Z i-- —D - 
NOTES FROM IRELAND. 
The Fbuit Chops : Cam Peaches be Geown in 
the Open Aie ?—Most people, as you very correctly 
remarked in your last issue, anticipated, from the 
splendid ripening and unusually dry weather of last 
year, a prodigious crop of outdoor fruit, but they weie 
doomed to disappointment. Even if the low tempera¬ 
ture during fructification did not affect them, the 
repeated hail storms must have done so. In fact, I 
saw more than once, in neighbouring gardens, flower 
petals, and no doubt flower stamens—if I may use a 
new phrase—flying, and cut right away by hailstones 
\ in. in diameter. Visiting one of the finest and best 
kept gardens in this county the other day—and this 
locality is singularly favoured — my inquiries and 
observations confirmed the usual accounts from 
elsewhere : the prospects in April and May were very 
bright, but closer scrutiny later on shows a different 
result. 
There is a splendid prospect of Peaches on a 
south wall, 300 ft. long, at Minella, near here, the 
residence of Mrs. Malcolmson, but it was protected 
from the end of March until the fruit was fully 
“ set,” with glass sashes. It is simply a waste of time 
and labour to try to succeed without glass protection ; 
but there must be a thorough free circulation of air. 
To aim at this, Mr. Crehan, the head-gardener at 
Minella, rests his sashes on a frame, designed by 
himself, about 6 ins. from the ground. In another 
garden near by the sashes were raised so as to be 
about 4 ft. from the ground, but success was not 
achieved. If any man could have succeeded in 
growing Peaches on unprotected walls, Mr. Osborne, 
head-gardener to A. H. Smith Barry, Esq., Fota 
Island, near Queenstown—with perhaps as fine a 
climate, according to Sir J. Hooker, who visited it, as 
the Isle of Wight—would have done so. Visiting the 
gardens there some time ago, he assured us he was 
giving up the experiment as impracticable. 
I found the same thing true of Mr. Fairbairn, at 
Curraghmore, the palatial residence of the Marquis 
of Waterford, which His Royal Highness the Prince 
of Wales was curious enough recently to go out of 
his way to see, and which I very fully described, with 
its 20,000 acres of demesne and corresponding size 
of gardens, in your contemporary, The Gardeners' 
Chronicle, last year. It had been long previously 
given up also at the old princely residence of 
A. McMurrough Kavanagh, Esq., Borris, co. Carlow, 
when I called there. Driving some thirty miles on 
the same occasion to see the beautiful show garden 
of the Hon. Lady Louisa Tighe, at Woodstock, co. 
Kilkenny-—then described in The Garden —Mr. Gray, 
the intelligent and courteous head-gardener, showed 
me where he had “ glassed-in ” the Peach-wall, and 
virtually made it a “ Peach-house.” 
If the reader will accompany me mentally to the 
other side of Ireland, I may note that at Kylemore 
Castle Gardens, in the centre of what I may call the 
Connemara desert in Galway, I saw indoors the largest 
and best-flavoured Peaches I ever noticed. In con¬ 
clusion, I may say, from this hasty survey of Ireland, 
in no part of the island will or can Peaches be suc- 
FUCHSIA GEXEEAL GOEDON. 
cessfully grown in the open air and unprotected. One 
exception alone have I met, that of Roebuck Castle, 
near Dublin, shown me by Mr. Bracken, head-gardener 
to E. P. Westby, Esq.— W. J. Murphy, Clonmel. 
—— 
FUCHSIA GENERAL GORDON. 
We have received from Mr. Robert Owen, The Floral 
Nursery, Castle Hill, Maidenhead, some blooms of his 
new Fuchsia General Gordon, which are certainly the 
largest that have come under our observation. We 
give above an engraving of one of the blooms—not the 
largest—natural size, in order the better to show its 
fine proportions, and may add that the petals are broad 
and stout, of a rich shade of purple, veined with 
scarlet at the base, and the tube and sepals bright red, 
verging on crimson. In size, shape, substance, and 
colour, General Gordon seems to be all that can be 
desired, and we learn from Mr. Owen that it is a good 
grower and free bloomer. 
OUR FRUIT CROPS. 
Speaking of a limited area, the fruit crops are 
generally satisfactory in this part of Lancashire, 
except in the case of Damsons, of which I was con¬ 
fidentially informed the other day that there was not 
one in the county. Apples—which I regard as the 
most important crop—are extremely evenly placed on 
all tiees. Pears are disappointing, and have dropped 
off till the last few days from large orchard trees, and 
to-day I failed to see a single fruit on two trees, 30 ft. 
high, of Marie Louise. Such a failure has not 
occurred before during the last five years. Williams’s 
Bon Chretien and Beurre de Amanlis in the same 
row are fairly sprinkled, and Louise Bonne on the 
opposite or northern side of the orchard has, as usual, 
a good crop. On the walls the Pears are probably 
over an average, and here again on a west aspect a 
tree of Marie Louise, covering a space 30 ft. by 10 ft., 
is entirely destitute of fruit, which is a most unusual 
occurrence, whilst on the same aspect a second-rate 
Pear, unknown to me, and which has only borne a 
few fruits once in four years, has a fair sprinkling on 
it this year. 
At Worden Hall, near Preston, the choice sorts of 
Pears are on the south wall—which I consider the 
most fitting aspect for our northern climate. There 
the trees were well-loaded when I saw them three 
weeks ago, and in many instances a dozen might be 
covered with the palm of the hand, so that Mr. Frisby 
contemplated thinning. In the same garden Apricots 
and Plums are a good crop. Peaches and Nectarines, 
where timely attention was given to the fly, which was 
most persistent last spring, have plenty of fruit on them. 
Bellegarde Peach and Elruge Nectarine are the best 
with us. Cherries are a mystery to me. Our trees, 
the same as elsewhere are annually a perfect sheet of 
blossom, yet we never get what may be termed a 
heavy crop, and the one this year is as good as any. 
They are all planted on a south wall, and one is over¬ 
hung with the eaves of a building quite 2 ft., and well 
sheltered in other ways, so that it is in the next best 
position to being covered with glass, but it is only 
occasionally that it shows any more gratitude than 
the rest for being so favourably situated. Morellos 
are, as usual, loaded. 
Bush Feuit. —Gooseberries, where the birds have 
not interfered with the buds in the spring, are, I 
think, the heaviest crop I ever witnessed, and we 
always have what would be considered a full crop. 
Currants are also a good crop, but have recently 
become infested with aphis, the black ones more than 
the others, and the swelling of the fruit has been sadly 
interrupted. Birds made sad havoc with buds of bush 
fruit in the early months of the year in some gardens. 
We have some here in an orchard which are not so 
much under our eye as the others that are completely 
stripped, even the Black Currants, an occurrence that 
I never observed before till last year, when about half- 
a-dozen green linnets appeared to do all the mischief, 
and this year they and the same number of tom-tits 
have reduced the crop from bushels to quarts. Why 
didn’t I shoot them ? I reply obstruction, obstruction, 
Sir ; and half-a-dozen gun shots would have made all 
the difference. Five years ago, in consequence of the 
hard winters and different arrangements as to shooting, 
there were none of these destructive creatures to be 
seen in this garden, and very few others that are 
troublesome to the gardener. 
Raspberries with their usual unfailing regularity are 
a heavy crop, and hitherto have not suffered from 
drought, which they rarely do in this part, and the 
rain this day will do them and other things a vast 
amount of good. The Raspberry, so far as I know, 
enjoys perfect immunity from diseases or the attacks 
of insects, and the late period at which it flowers 
places it beyond the reach of frost. Strawberries are 
a heavy crop, on young plants particularly so. The 
dry hot weather of the past week or two seems to have 
been too much for old plants, and reports have reached 
me that on light sandy soils the fruit on early sorts 
is scarcely worth picking. We picked our first dish 
of Keen’s seedling from a south border on the 10th of 
this month.— W. P. R., Preston, July 13th. 
— c-- . — 
“ Familiae Tkees” is the title of a work, by Mr. G 
S. Boulger, that Messrs. Cassell will publish in 
monthly parts. It will range with Mr. Shirley 
Hibberd’s Familiar Garden Flowers and Mr. Sways- 
land’s Familiar Birds. 
