February 2, 1901. 
THH GARDENING WORLD 
361 
aristata. The Montbretias are all popular for 
exhibition in stands of hardy herbaceous plants. 
Petunias.— W. Y. B .: Your best plan would be to 
make cuttings of the tips of the shoots of your 
Petunias. If the shoots are very soft you might not 
be successful in striking them unless great care was 
taken. Place them in shallow boxes filled with light 
sandy soil, and place these in a little frame or green¬ 
house whose temperature is about 55 9 or 6o°. They 
can be potted when well rooted. The old plants 
will carry through and should break into fresh 
growth. Do not allow them to become “ drawn.” 
Proportion of Pigeon Manure to the Square 
Yard.—TP. Y. B —Though pigeon manure is almost 
double the value of poultry manure yet you can use 
the pigeon manure in equal proportion to the other, 
that is about 4 lb. per sq. yd. A very great deal 
depends on the mechanical and other conditions of 
the soil. 
What constitutes an 8-in. Pot? —TP. Y. B.\ A 
pot 8-in. in diameter, measuring from the inside at 
the top of the pot. It is thus when we speak of 2-in., 
by boiling i lb. of soft soap in a gallon of hot water, 
adding at the same time one wineglassful of methy¬ 
lated spirits of wine. Brush this into the crevices, 
cracks, and all places of the walls and the branches 
of the trees. 
--•#*- 
A LONDON MARKET GARDEN. 
Around the outer fringes of the great metropolis, 
there are a vast number of nurseries and market 
gardens. Some of these commercial gardens are 
hugely extensive—at least, according to our English 
ideas. The acreage of glass over which they span 
varies from ten up to forty-three acres, the latter 
being the size of the largest. In the present case we 
will find enough to detail about the winter working 
of the ten acres of glass named the Nether Street 
Nurseries, which belong to Mr. W. J. Batho, out at 
Finchley, London, N. Finchley Is one of the great 
Grape growing centres, and Vines are therefore the 
principal subjects in permanent occupation of Mr. 
Batho’s glasshouses. Butflower-forcing ranks as an 
industry now-a-days, and when one is told that fifty 
dozen bunches, each having twelve spikes of Lily of 
the Valley is sent daily into Covent Garden Market 
by piecework. A great many men were working 
with unusual heartiness at this occupation; so 
willingly indeed that I evinced surprise. My con¬ 
ductor smiled as he explained that time meant money, 
and that each man is paid so much per dozen boxes 
that he fills. " It is more satisfactory to them and 
more satisfactory to their employer,” said Mr. 
Masked. All the best market Ferns, mostly Pteris, 
as P. cretica, P. c. Wimsettii, P. tremula, and P. 
serrulata cristata fill quite a number of long, 
low, span-roofed houses, all of them splendid struc¬ 
tures. 
The houses indeed are worth a special note to 
themselves. As will be seen in the accompany¬ 
ing illustration of one of the Muscat vineries, 
they are spacious and substantial. The figure 
represents the type of all the others, both the early 
forced, mid-season, and late vineries. The smaller 
spans (and all are spans) are equally well constructed 
and as roomy as is consistent with the needs of 
the case. The smaller houses are mostly ventilated 
with the Kinnel gear, the working principle of which 
is that the top ventilators open upward from the 
sloping sides of the house, and are worked from one 
of the ends outside, by a strong lever and a connect- 
Muscat House at the Nether Street Nurseries, Finchley. 
3-in., 4-in., 5-in. pots, and so on. Sometimes one 
writes of 32-sized pots; 60-sized pots. When this 
form of announcement is used we refer to the number 
of a certain size of pot that can be had from one 
"cast” of clay used in the making of the pots. It 
used to be the practice to divide clay into portions 
termed "casts.” These were all of equal size and 
thus one cast of clay might make eighty pots or 
only one according to the size. This practice has 
been altered, however. We append a table of the 
Old names and sizes of pots. 
Depth. Diameter, No. to Cast. \ Name. 
Ins. 
18 
Ins. 
20 
1 .. 
I’S 
Ins. 
20 
T 4 
18 
2 .. 
2’S 
18 
£ 3 
15 
4 •• 
4 's 
15 
12 
13 
6 .. 
6's 
13 
XI 
12 
8 .. 
8's 
12 
10 
IX 4 
12 .. 
12’s 
II 
9 
94 
16 .. 
16’s 
9 
8 
84 
24 .. 
24’s 
32’s 
8 
' 6 
6 
32 .. 
6 
5 
4 i 
48 .. 
48’s 
5 
34 
3 
60 .. 
6o's 
3 
25 
24 
80 .. 
8 o’s 
24 
Scale on|fruit trees.— A. G.: Make an emulsion 
at this lima of year from this individual north 
London garden, the truth of the above remarks 
seems to require no arguiDg. I am quite sure of my 
figures for I doubly interrogated my friend, Mr. A. 
G. Maskell, who is Mr. Batho's right hand man, and 
an excellent chap altogether. Yes, and a cool one 
and a half million crowns of these " Valley Lilies ” 
are forced annually. Amongst other flowers that 
are brought forward for market supply are Roman 
Hyacinths, but so cheap and plentiful is the Lily of 
the Valley, that gradually the latter is lessening the 
demand for the former. Due Van Tholl Tulips, 
Narcissi, Bermuda Lilies, and Azaleas, are also 
largely forced. 
It was most interesting to me to see a dozen to 
twenty lads and men bunching and packing all the 
various flowers in flat boxes to be ready for the 
van which starts at 4 o’clock for Covent Garden, 
about eight miles in toward London's heart. One 
van goes every work day, and another one thrice a 
week, making nine loads in all—surely a respectable 
output ? Mr. Batho, by the way, has a stall in the 
market. Apropos to what was written a few lines 
previously about Lily of the Valley, it is interesting 
to note that the crowns are put into boxes 4 in. deep 
ing rod which runs through pulleys along the inside 
of the house. 
The Ficus elastica or so-called India rubber 
plants, both the common and the variegated forms, 
stretch along the stages by the thousand ; and the 
Zonal and Ivy-leaved Pelargoniums as well as the 
show and fancy sections are liberally grown at the 
Nether Street Nurseries. Spiraeas, Solanums, 
Fuchsias, Lantanas in pets, Primulas and large 
quantities of bedding plants occupy additional 
houses. Cinerarias were represented by exceedingly 
well-grown, vigorous, stout and large-headed plants 
These were certainly as fine a batch as I ever 
remember to have seen, and they further 
strengthened my predilections for confining 
Cinerarias to small pots, each of the massive plants 
in this case being in 32’s. Once the roots have 
ramified through the soil in the pots the necessary 
nourishment is aptly furnished by adding a handful 
of Ichthemic or other guano to the gallon of water 
when supplying the plants. It is worthy to note 
that the public almost universally reject the blue- 
flowered varieties of greenhouse Cinerarias. They 
prefer the light coloured sorts—the whites, the 
striped ones and the warmer shades of crimson, but 
