GARDEN NOTES

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9999, 31 March 1898, Page 3

GARDEN NOTES

"Weekly Press and Referee. Ground intended for fruit trees or bushes should be trenched to about lift to 2£ft, according to the natural depth of the good soil. This work is performed to the greatest ■advantage in fine weather. The soil afc the bottom of the trench should be loosened with a fork or pick and levelled. A good layer of manure should be placed on the loosened soil, then turn in the top spit and another layer of manure, then the remainder of the good soil may be shovelled in. The object to be attained by trenching is to give a larger dressing of manure to the ground than could be applied if it had only been dug. A good way to apply the manure is to spread a thick coating over the surface of the soil, and as the first spit of earth is forked into the opening that has been made at one end of the ground the rrianure becomes mixed with it. The loose soil should then be thrown in with another layer of manure. If the ground requires digging only let it be done to a uniform depth and as neatly as possible. The autumn months are very suitable for the application of manure to established trees, either in a liquid form or as a top-dressing. <

In a lecture delivered before the Royal Horticultural Society, a distinguished gardener (Mr Iggulden) treated the above named subject in a very practical manner. Mr Iggulden's advice was not to grow Cyclamens unless prepared to do it well, otherwise it was best to leave them alone. Seed was often sown early in the year, but there was not sufficient time for the plants to develop. Autumn sowing was much better, and details were given as to sowing also the importance of sowing new seed, the latter having more vigour and germinating freely. Young plants must not be checked in any way from the start, but be kept growing and perfectly clean. The temperature the lecturer recommended was from 60° to 70° for the seed. It should be sown in a compost of fibrous loam, leaf mould and sand, at half an inch apart, in pans covered over with sheets of glass, and shaded to prevent drying of the soil. As soon as large enough to handle, the seedlings should be carefully lifted out of the pane and potted up into 2£in pots, using a similar compost to that in which the seeds were sown. Here more care was needed than was at times given, as if the tender rootlets arbroken in the operation, the plants receive such a check that they rarely grow out of its After potting up, the plants are best stood on a coal-ash bottom on a stage in low houses or pits, shading from sun. A small house is advised, as here more moisture is retained. At the second shift the compost should consist of two parts loam, one of leaf soil and one of coarse sand, and sin pots are best, firm potting and ample drainage being necessary. Place again in the structure, advised till the roots reach the sides of the pots, and take care to spray the plants over-head twice daily, morning and afternoon, well damping the foliage, In summer the plants are best grown in low cool frames on an ash bottomhousing in autumn not far from the glass. It is best to water at the side of the pots. During the flowering period he advised a lower temperature—4s° by night and 50° by day. Another point be strongly emphasised was thoroughly ripening the crowns after flowering, as by so doing better growth followed. Two-year-old plants he found flowered much better than one-year, old own.

Of all the numerous operations which come within the range of the gardener's art, that of potting and shifting tender plants from one pot to another must be regarded as one of the most important. A volume could be written on it without exhausting its details or exaggerating its importance in its relation to the numerous varieties of plants and fruits now cultivated in pots. If in anything in gardening "practice combined with intelligence " be not necessary, certainly it is not in potting. By potting Ido not merely mean the mechanical operation of surrounding the roots of a plant in a pot with soil. A mere machine might possibly be invented to do that.

Not only does every family and genus of plants need different treatment in this respect, but each species and variety requires to be studied, and the potting adjusted to its peculiarities, of constitution and growth. The intelligent observation and sound reasoning of the cultivator must be carefully exercised in the performance of 'this important operation, or high cultivation need not be looked for as a rule. And very much as has the progress of horticulture depended on the observation or noticetaking of practical men, I question if from any other source improved practice in cultivation has resulted so much, as it has from the observations Sod deductions of practitioners at the potting-bench. However the fact can be accounted for, it has come within my knowledge that men who could discourse eloquently on the science of horticulture, and profess to teach the sound principles of all its branches, make a moat complete bungle of potting or shifting a plant, and succeed chiefly in violating every principle -on which the health of their subjects depends. In very many instances the practitioner has had to navigate his way to success with next to no extraneous aid, and this forcibly applies to the potting of plants.

In most instances pots are a necessary evil. This being the case, it is of paramount importance to mitigate the evil as much as possible. By way of throwing out a few hints calculated to be useful to beginners at the potting-bench—among whom I would include our scientific friends who may try their amateur hands at this operation, by way of relaxation perhaps—l would remark that the first thing to be considered in potting a plant to be placed in a glass house is that in nearly every respect it is being placed under circumstances that are thoroughly artificial. The space for its roots is unnaturally restricted, and contains, comparatively speaking, but a few handfuls of soil, which, along with the roots, is exposed to the drying influence of air, not only on the surface, but at the bottom and sides of the ball as well. This exposes the plant to be constantly and rapidly robbed of the moisture necessary to its existence, and much of the food supplied to it within the compass of its pot. This unnatural lose has as constantly to be made good by large supplies of water artificially supplied to soil in the very artificial position of being in a pot. This state of things has a constant tendency to call into play a host of other evils which have to be carefully obviated in the choice of materials for, and in the operation of, potting. It being necessary to administer copious supplies of wate almost daily, and sometimes oftener than once a day, the two moat prominent and de structive conditions incident to such a necessity are those of stagnant water and the rapid decomposition of the organic substances in the potting material. To some extent these evils are dependent 09 each other, and are nearly, always in existence at the aa^..;time,_ /v '_*'^ s ..,^_.^, ; . ,■ Perhaps the draining or crocking of pots may at this era of horticulture be considered too common or too trifling a subject to dilate on with profit to readers. Good cultivators do not regard any point as trifling, and I am content to submit ray verdict to the most successful growers when I say that the draining lies at the foundation of successful pot-plant culture, and that it is one which, if not properly performed and adjusted to the nature of individual plants, will thwart the most careful and correct attention to all the other points of culture. Not only so, but I am convinced that the carelessness aud unbusinesslike way in which it is performed in many instances warrants that its importance should be made very prominent; and in a long and extensive practice I am now more convinced than ever that more illhealth and disease and death are caused by inefficient drainage of pots than by any other cause, or perhaps all causes put together.

It is not only not so much on the quantity of crocks put into a pot, as on their proper adjustment, that success in carrying off all superfluous water from the soil in a pot depends. A pot half full of crocks may not be so well drained as another may be with only an inch. In all well-ordered gardens where pot plants are grown there should be three or four different sizes of crocks, sizes that may be termed for ordinary purposes inch, half-inch, and quarter-inch crocks, which, in breaking up a mass of crocks, can be easily assorted by using sieves of different sizes. These must be as clean as the pots themselves, and all dust should be separated from them. Speaking generally the largest of them should form three-fourths of the drainage of large pots, and the other fourth, consisting of the second size, should be blended with the smaller, and over all a little dry moss, or a portion of the most fibry of the soil, should be placed. In a moist stove where plants have to be heavily syringed, or in the case of delicate hardwooded plants, a 14 or 16in pot should never have less than 3 or 4in of drain, age thus arranged;' while in the case of special and shallow-rooting plants it should be double this amount, or even more, just as the tendency of the plant is found to be surface-rooting. An llin or an Bin pot will be sufficiently drained with a lesser depth of crocks in proportion to its size; 2in and l£in being generally sufficient, but always arranged with the same scrupulous care. This rule applies with augmented force to all plants that are plunged, such as Pines, and to plants of delicate constitution, whether they be soft or hardwooded. The concave side of the crock or piece of broken pot should be placed undermost in placing it over the holes in the bottom of the pots, for, if placed the other way, it often fits too closely to the pots to admit of the ready passage of the superfluous water. Thus arranged, the soil used in potting does not get down amongst the crocks and prevent their serving their intended end.

If anyone wants to prove—who has not done so already—that this is a trifling part of plant culture, let him take two Heaths, Azaleas, Camellias, or even a Pine plant, or a Pelargonium, and drain the pot for one of them as above described, and the pot for its fellow by carelessly—a by no means uncommon practice —putting into the bottom of the pot a few large and ungainly pieces of dirty pot or brick, and subject the plants to the same treatment otherwise, and they will be witness to results so diverse that the matter will soon come to be regarded as of paramount importance, and they will not consider (hat I have insisted on the strict observance of a trifling point of culture. I might almost say that what the foundation is to the structure, the proper draining is to the successful growth of plants in pots.

Only the other day I was engaged in shifting some Azaleas which, had their pots properly drained two years since, and on turninf them out of their poU the orocks

fell from the bottom of their balls as clean as the day they were put in. The roots of these plants were in the most perfect health, ready for increased feeding ground. In the case of others, which had a few large pieces of crocks pitched carelessly into their pots, the passage for water was next to entirely filled up by the soil working down among the crocks to the bottom of the pots. The consequence was that half the ball stuck in the pot, and it was a soured mass of peat, in which the roots had perished, if ever they had entered it at all. Such crocking in conjunction with old unwashed pots is in time certain death to plants, if the evil is not put right.— Journal of Horticulture.