THE GARDEN. [BY HORTUS.]

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 344, 20 February 1889, Page 3

THE GARDEN. [BY HORTUS.]

Chrysanthemums. The size and quality of the flowers of the chrysanthemum will depend much upon the attention the planes will receive from now till the flowering period. There are few plants that require so much rooL-moisture, or will bear such an amount of liberal feeding with liquid manure. The best flowers which I have ever seen were from plants that received a liberal supply of liquid manure once a week, after which they were planted out. To grow large flowers a eonsidorable thinning of flower buds must take place. The best time to thin them is when the buds have attained the size of small peas, reducing- the number of buds on each shoot according to the size the varieties attain ; the larger the variety the fewer flowers should be lefb on individual shoots. Those who have nob yet tried to giow large flowers on their plauts should try a few this season. There is only a little labour attached to the thinning- of buds, and the cultivator will be well repaid by the more perfect flowers which he will be able to produce, each flower leit being able to draw more sap than when all the buds are left to develop. All the fine large flowers staged at the British exhibitions are grown on plauts that receive very liberal treatment while growing. The buds are in all cases thinned off, leaving only a few on each shoot. Attention should be given to each plant now to see that it is properly tied to the stakes, so that' the wind does not break the v shoots. If dry weather prevails, then besides giving 't'lie root liquid manure, occasionally syringe the foliage with clean water ; this will promotea healthiergrowth. i

Rings in Trees Not a Test of Age. We learn from the " Lumber World " that MrR. W. F arras, an agent of ,the United States Forestry Department, who. has_given much attention to the age of trees as indicated by rings, as well as to the period at which trees of different species stop growing, and that at which the wood is at its best, has reached some conclusions , of general interest. He says : " Concentric or annual rings, which were once accepted as good legal evidence, fail except where climate, soil, teicpeiature, humidity, and | all other surroundings are regular and well balanced; otherwise they are mere guesswork. The only region within myknowledge where either rings, or measurements were reliable indications are in the secluded, even, and regularly-te,mpered valleys of che Southern Pacific coast. Annual measure- | ments of white elm, catalpa, scft maple, sycamore, pig-hickory, cotton-wood, chest-, nut, box-elder, honey-locust, coffee-tree, bur and white oak, black walnut, osageorange, white, pine, red cedar, mulberry and yellow willow, made in south-eastern Nebraska, show that annual growth is very ir- ■ regular, sometimes scarcely perceptible, and again quite large." This he attrirbutes to the difference in the seasons. As trees increase in age, inner i-ings decrease in size, sometimes almost disappearing. Diminished rate in growth after a certain age is a rule. Of four great beeches mentioned in London, there were three, each about seventeen feet in girth, whose ages were respectively sixty, one hundred and two, and two hundred years. Mr Furras found twelve rings in a black locust tree six years old, twenty-one rings in a shell bark -hickory of twelve years, ten lings in a pig-hickory of six years, eleven rings in a wild crab-apple of five years, and twentyfour'rings in a chescnut oak of twenty-four years. An American cheatnutof only four years had nine rings, while a peach of eight years had only, five rings, Dr A. M. Child s, a resident of Nebraska from 1854 to 1882, and a careful observer for the Smithsonian Institution, counted rings on some soft maples elev.en years two months old, and found on one side of the I heart of one of them forty rings, and no fewer than thirty-five *j any where, which were quite distinct when the wood was green ; bufc after it had been seasoned, only twenty-four rings could be distinguished. . Another expert says that all our northern J hard woods make many rings a year, sometimes as many as twelve ; but as the last set of cells in a year's growth are very small and the first very large, the annual growth can always be determined except when, from local causes, there is in any pai'ticular year little or no ceU growth. This may give a large number on one side. Upon the Pacific coast of North America trees do not reach the point where they stop growing nearly so early as those on the Atlantic coast. Two hundred years is about the greatest age attained on the eastern side of the continent by trees that retain their vigour ; while it is five hundred years in the case of several specimens on the western coast, and one writer is con • fident that a sequoi which was measured 'was two thousand three hundred and twenty-six years old. At Wrangel, a western hemlock six feet in diameter at the stump, was four feet in diameter one hundred and thirty-two feet further up the trunk. In the old Bartram gardens, near Philadelphia, not more than one hundred and fifty years old, almost all the trees are on, the "down grade. The oak, which' is England's pride, ' and which at home is said to live one thousand years, has grown to full size and died in this garden, and the foreign epruce is following suit. Silver firs planted in 1800 are decaying. The great difference in the longevity of trees upon the western and eastern coasts of continents in the Northern Hemisphere ' seems to be due to the warm moist air. carried by strong and permanent ocean currents from the tropics 'north easterly in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, which makes the climates both moist and equable in high latitudes.— "Chambers's Journal."

Clippings. To Destroy American Bug. or Woolly Aphis. — Mr Speed, the able gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, has furnished us with the following infallible remedy :— Take a pint of gas tar, and mix with it a pint of dry powdered clay. Form the whole into a paste by adding by degrees a gallon of warm soft water. If, this is applied with a brush during winter, it effectually destroys woolly aphis, and,:indeed, all insects, while it does not injure the trees. To Destroy Red Spider,— For 36 years I have not been troubled with spider or mildew on my peach walls, but both p^sts ad been troublesome to my predecessor. After the trees have been nailed I mix ,61b of sulphur and tone it down with soot, and apply it on the wall with the syringe; or engine. I put it on thickest at the bottom of the wall for the vapour from the sulphur to ascend amongst the foliage. After the fruib is set', bn a fine sunny afternoon when the wall is still warm, I syringe with milk-warm-water ; the vapour will spread itfcelf over the whole wall.*' Ido this two or tfyree. times a week on fine days. Syringing the tender foliage of peach trees with cold water is a 3ad mistake, too often practiced, lam sorry to say.— J. C, Felton-park Gardens. \

• First .burglar ; M What's your favourite game?" .Second burglar: "Well, cribbage. And yours ?" First <« burglar : "G»b."